During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, German citizens and people of German ancestry were expelled from various Eastern European countries and sent to the remaining territory of Germany and Austria. After 1950, some emigrated to the United States, Australia, and other countries from there. The areas affected included the former eastern territories of Germany, which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union after the war, as well as Germans who were living within the prewar borders of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic States. The Nazishad made plans—only partially completed before the Nazi defeat—to remove many Slavic and Jewish people from Eastern Europe and settle the area with Germans.[1][2] The post war expulsion of the Germans formed a major part of the geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II, that attempted to create ethnically homogeneous nations within redefined borders.[3] Between 1944 and 1948 about 31 million people, including ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) as well as German citizens (Reichsdeutsche), were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe.[4]

By 1950, a total of approximately 12 million Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into Allied-occupied Germany and Austria. The West German government put the total at 14 million, including ethnic German migrants to Germany after 1950 and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from preexisting German territories ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union (about 7 million), and from Czechoslovakia (about 3 million). During the Cold War, the West German government also counted as expellees 1 million foreign colonists settled in territories conquered by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from 500,000, up to a West German demographic estimate from the 1950s of over 2 million. More recent estimates by some historians put the total at 500-600,000 attested deaths; they maintain that the West German government figures lack adequate support and that during the Cold War the higher figures were used for political propaganda.[5][6] The German Historical Museum puts the figure at 600,000, maintaining that the figure of 2 million deaths in the previous government studies cannot be supported.[7] The current official position of the German government is that the death toll resulting from the flight and expulsions ranged from 2 to 2.5 million civilians. [8][9][10]

The removals occurred in three overlapping phases, the first of which was the organized evacuation of ethnic Germans by the Nazi government in the face of the advancing Red Army, from mid-1944 to early 1945.[11] The second phase was the disorganised fleeing of ethnic Germans immediately following the Wehrmacht's defeat. The third phase was a more organised expulsion following the Allied leaders' Potsdam Agreement,[11] which redefined the Central European borders and approved expulsions of ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.[12] Many German civilians were sent to internment and labour camps where they were used as forced labour as part of German reparations to countries in eastern Europe.[13] The major expulsions were complete in 1950.[11] Estimates for the total number of people of German ancestry still living in Central and Eastern Europe in 1950 range from 700,000 to 2.7 million.

Before World War II, East-Central Europe generally lacked clearly shaped ethnic settlement areas. There were some ethnic majority areas, but there were also vast mixed areas and abundant smaller pockets settled by various ethnicities. Within these areas of diversity, including the major cities of Central and Eastern Europe, regular interaction among various ethnic groups had taken place on a daily basis for centuries, while not always harmoniously, on every civic and economic level.[14]

With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the ethnicity of citizens became an issue[14] in territorial claims, the self-perception/identity of states, and claims of ethnic superiority. The German Empire introduced the idea of ethnicity-based settlement in an attempt to ensure its territorial integrity. It was also the first modern European state to propose population transfers as a means of solving "nationality conflicts", intending the removal of Poles and Jews from the projected post–World War I "Polish Border Strip" and its resettlement with Christian ethnic Germans.[15]

Following the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire, and the German empire at the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles pronounced the formation of several independent states in Central and Eastern Europe, in territories previously controlled by these imperial powers. None of the new states were ethnically homogeneous.[16] After 1919, many ethnic Germans emigrated from the former imperial lands back to Germany and Austria after losing their privileged status in those foreign lands, where they had maintained majority communities. In 1919 ethnic Germans became national minorities in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania. In the following years, the Nazi ideology encouraged them to demand local autonomy. In Germany during the 1930s, Nazi propaganda claimed that Germans elsewhere were subject to persecution. Nazi supporters throughout eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia's Konrad Henlein, Poland's Deutscher Volksverband and Jungdeutsche Partei, Hungary's Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn) formed local Nazi political parties sponsored financially by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, e.g. by Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. However, by 1939 more than half of Polish Germans lived outside of the formerly German territories of Poland due to improving economic opportunities.[17]

Ethnic German population: 1958 West German estimates vs pre war(1930/31) national census figures

During the Nazi German occupation many citizens of German descent in Poland registered with the Deutsche Volksliste. Some were given important positions in the hierarchy of the Nazi administration, and some participated in Nazi atrocities, causing resentment towards German speakers in general. These facts were later used by the Allied politicians as one of the justifications for expulsion of the Germans.[32] The contemporary position of the German government is that, while the Nazi-era war crimes resulted in the expulsion of the Germans, the deaths due to the expulsions were an injustice.[33]

The expulsion policy was part of a geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of postwar Europe. In part, it was retribution for Nazi Germany's initiation of the war and subsequent atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Nazi-occupied Europe.[35][36] Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Joseph Stalin of the USSR, had agreed in principle before the end of the war that the border of Poland's territory would be moved west (though how far was not specified) and that the remaining ethnic German population were subject to expulsion. They assured the leaders of the émigré governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia, both occupied by Nazi Germany, of their support on this issue.[37][38][39][40]

Given the complex history of the affected regions and the divergent interests of the victorious Allied powers, it is difficult to ascribe a definitive set of motives to the expulsions. The respective paragraph of the Potsdam Agreement only states vaguely: "The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agreed that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner." The major motivations revealed were:

A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states: This is presented by several authors as a key issue that motivated the expulsions.[41][42][43][44][45][46]

View of a German minority as potentially troublesome: From the Soviet perspective, shared by the communist administrations installed in Soviet-occupied Europe, the remaining large German populations outside postwar Germany were seen as a potentially troublesome 'fifth column' that would, because of its social structure, interfere with the envisioned Sovietisation of the respective countries.[47] The Western allies also saw the threat of a potential German 'fifth column', especially in Poland after the agreed-to compensation with former German territory.[41] In general, the Western allies hoped to secure a more lasting peace by eliminating the German minorities, which they thought could be done in a humane manner.[41][48]

Soviet political considerations. Stalin saw the expulsions as a means of creating antagonism between the Soviet satellite states and their neighbours. The satellite states would then need the protection of the Soviet Union.[53] The expulsions served several practical purposes as well.

The creation of ethnically homogeneous nation states in Central and Eastern Europe[42] was presented as the key reason for the official decisions of the Potsdam and previous Allied conferences as well as the resulting expulsions.[43] The principle of every nation inhabiting its own nation state gave rise to a series of expulsions and resettlements of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and others who after the war found themselves outside their supposed home states.[44] The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey lent legitimacy to the concept. Churchill cited the operation as a success in a speech discussing the German expulsions.[54][55]

In view of the desire for ethnically homogeneous nation-states, it did not make sense to draw borders through regions which were already inhabited homogeneously by Germans without any minorities. As early as 9 September 1944, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and Polish communist Edward Osóbka-Morawski of the Polish Committee of National Liberation signed a treaty in Lublin on population exchanges of Ukrainians and Poles living on the "wrong" side of the Curzon Line.[44] Many of the 2.1 million Poles expelled from the Soviet-annexed Kresy, so-called 'repatriants', were resettled to former German territories, then dubbed 'Recovered Territories'.[52] Czech Edvard Beneš, in his decree of 19 May 1945, termed ethnic Hungarians and Germans "unreliable for the state", clearing a way for confiscations and expulsions.[56]

One of the reasons given for the population transfer of Germans from the former eastern territories of Germany was the claim that these areas had been a stronghold of the Nazi movement.[57] Neither Stalin nor the other influential advocates of this argument required that expellees be checked for their political attitudes or their activities. Even in the few cases when this happened and expellees were proven to have been bystanders, opponents or even victims of the Nazi regime, they were rarely spared from expulsion.[58] Polish Communist propaganda used and manipulated hatred of the Nazis to intensify the expulsions.[45]

With German communities living within the pre-war borders of Poland, there was an expressed fear of disloyalty of Germans in Eastern Upper Silesia and Pomerelia, based on wartime Nazi activities.[59] Created on order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, a Nazi ethnic German organisation called Selbstschutz carried out executions during Intelligenzaktion alongside operational groups of German military and police, in addition to such activities as identifying Poles for execution and illegally detaining them.[60]

The participants at the Potsdam Conference asserted that expulsions were the only way to prevent ethnic violence. As Winston Churchill expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, insofar as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by the prospect of disentanglement of populations, not even of these large transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions than they have ever been before".[62]

Polish resistance fighter, statesman and courier Jan Karski warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 of the possibility of Polish reprisals, describing them as "unavoidable" and "an encouragement for all the Germans in Poland to go west, to Germany proper, where they belong."[63]

The expulsions were also driven by a desire for retribution, given the brutal way German occupiers treated non-German civilians in the German-occupied territories during the war. Thus, the expulsions were at least partly motivated by the animus engendered by the war crimes and atrocities perpetrated by the German belligerents and their proxies and supporters.[43][49] Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, in the National Congress, justified the expulsions on 28 October 1945 by stating that the majority of Germans had acted in full support of Hitler; during a ceremony in remembrance of the Lidice massacre, he blamed all Germans as responsible for the actions of the German state.[50] In Poland and Czechoslovakia, newspapers,[64] leaflets and politicians across the political spectrum,[64][65] which narrowed during the post-war Communist take-over,[65] asked for retribution for wartime German activities.[64][65] Responsibility of the German population for the crimes committed in its name was also asserted by commanders of the late and post-war Polish military.[64]

Karol Świerczewski, commander of the Second Polish Army, briefed his soldiers to "exact on the Germans what they enacted on us, so they will flee on their own and thank God they saved their lives."[64]

In Poland, which had suffered the loss of six million citizens, including its elite and almost its entire Jewish population due to Lebensraum and the Holocaust, most Germans were seen as Nazi-perpetrators who could now finally be collectively punished for their past deeds.[52]

Stalin, who had earlier directed several population transfers in the Soviet Union, strongly supported the expulsions, which worked to the Soviet Union's advantage in several ways. The satellite states would now feel the need to be protected by the Soviets from German anger over the expulsions.[53] The assets left by expellees in Poland and Czechoslovakia were successfully used to reward cooperation with the new governments, and support for the Communists was especially strong in areas that had seen significant expulsions. Settlers in these territories welcomed the opportunities presented by their fertile soils and vacated homes and enterprises, increasing their loyalty.[66]

Late in the war, as the Red Army advanced westward, many Germans were apprehensive about the impending Soviet occupation.[67] Most were aware of the Soviet reprisals against German civilians.[68] Soviet soldiers committed numerous rapes and other crimes.[67][68][69] News of atrocities such as the Nemmersdorf massacre[67][68] were exaggerated and disseminated by the Nazi propaganda machine.[70]

Plans to evacuate the ethnic German population westward into Germany, from Poland and the eastern territories of Germany, were prepared by various Nazi authorities toward the end of the war. In most cases implementation was delayed until Soviet and Allied forces had defeated the German forces and advanced into the areas to be evacuated. The abandonment of millions of ethnic Germans in these vulnerable areas until combat conditions overwhelmed them can be attributed directly to the measures taken by the Nazis against anyone suspected of 'defeatist' attitudes (as evacuation was considered) and the fanaticism of many Nazi functionaries in their execution of Hitler's 'no retreat' orders.[67][69][71]

The first exodus of German civilians from the eastern territories was composed of both spontaneous flight and organised evacuation, starting in mid-1944 and continuing until early 1945. Conditions turned chaotic during the winter, when kilometres-long queues of refugees pushed their carts through the snow trying to stay ahead of the advancing Red Army.[11][72]

Refugee treks which came within reach of the advancing Soviets suffered casualties when targeted by low-flying aircraft, and some people were crushed by tanks.[68] The German Federal Archive has estimated that 100–120,000 civilians (1% of the total population) were killed during the flight and evacuations.[73] Polish historians Witold Sienkiewicz and Grzegorz Hryciuk maintain that civilian deaths in the flight and evacuation were "between 600,000 and 1.2 million. The main causes of death were cold, stress, and bombing."[74] The mobilized KdF liner, Wilhelm Gustloff, was sunk in January 1945 by a Soviet Navy submarine, killing about 9,000 civilians and military personnel escaping East Prussia in the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history. Many refugees tried to return home when the fighting ended. Before 1 June 1945, 400,000 people crossed back over the Oder and Neisse rivers eastward, before Soviet and Polish communist authorities closed the river crossings; another 800,000 entered Silesia through Czechoslovakia.[75]

In accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, at the end of 1945 – wrote Hahn & Hahn – 4.5 million Germans who had fled or been expelled were under the control of the Allied governments. From 1946–1950 around 4.5 million people were brought to Germany in organised mass transports from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. An additional 2.6 million released POWs were listed as expellees.[76]

Between 23 January and 5 May 1945, up to 250,000 Germans, primarily from East Prussia, Pomerania, and the Baltic states, were evacuated to Nazi-occupied Denmark,[77][78] based on an order issued by Hitler on 4 February 1945.[79] When the war ended, the German refugee population in Denmark amounted to 5% of the total Danish population. The evacuation focused on women, the elderly and children — a third of whom were under the age of fifteen.[78]

After the war, the Germans were interned in several hundred refugee camps throughout Denmark, the largest of which was the Oksbøl Refugee Camp with 37,000 inmates. The camps were guarded by Danish military units.[78] The situation eased after 60 Danish clergymen spoke in defence of the refugees in an open letter,[80] and Social Democrat Johannes Kjærbøl took over the administration of the refugees on 6 September 1945.[81] On 9 May 1945, the Red Army occupied the island of Bornholm; between 9 May and 1 June 1945, the Soviets shipped 3,000 refugees and 17,000 Wehrmacht soldiers from there to Kolberg.[82] In 1945, 13,492 German refugees died, among them 7,000 children[78] under five years of age.[83]

According to Danish physician and historian Kirsten Lylloff, these deaths were partially due to denial of medical care by Danish medical staff, as both the Danish Association of Doctors and the Danish Red Cross began refusing medical treatment to German refugees, starting in March 1945.[78] The last refugees left Denmark on 15 February 1949.[84] In the Treaty of London, signed 26 February 1953, West Germany and Denmark agreed on compensation payments of 160 million Danish crowns for its extended care of the refugees, which West Germany paid between 1953 and 1958.[85]

The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.[88]

The agreement further called for equal distribution of the transferred Germans for resettlement among American, British, French and Soviet occupation zones comprising post–World War II Germany.[89]

Expulsions that took place before the Allies agreed on the terms at Potsdam are referred to as "wild" expulsions (Wilde Vertreibungen). They were conducted by military and civilian authorities in Soviet-occupied post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia in the first half of 1945.[87][90]

In late 1945 the Allies requested a temporary halt to the expulsions, due to the refugee problems created by the expulsion of Germans.[87] While expulsions from Czechoslovakia were temporarily slowed, this was not true in Poland and the former eastern territories of Germany.[89] Sir Geoffrey Harrison, one of the drafters of the cited Potsdam article, stated that the "purpose of this article was not to encourage or legalize the expulsions, but rather to provide a basis for approaching the expelling states and requesting them to co-ordinate transfers with the Occupying Powers in Germany."[89]

German expellees, 1946

After Potsdam, a series of expulsions of ethnic Germans occurred throughout the Soviet-controlled Eastern European countries.[92][93] Property and materiel in the affected territory that had belonged to Germany or to Germans was confiscated; it was either transferred to the Soviet Union, nationalised, or redistributed among the citizens. Of the many post-war forced migrations, the largest was the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe, primarily from the territory of 1937 Czechoslovakia (which included the historically German-speaking area in the Sudeten mountains along the German-Czech-Polish border (Sudetenland)), and the territory that became post-war Poland. Poland's post-war borders were moved west to the Oder-Neisse line, deep into former German territory and within 80 kilometres of Berlin.[87]

Polish refugees from the Soviet Union were resettled in the former German territories that were awarded to Poland after the war. During and after the war, 2,208,000 Poles fled or were expelled from the eastern Polish regions that were annexed by the USSR; 1,652,000 of these refugees were resettled in the former German territories .[94]

The final agreement for the transfer of the Germans was reached at the Potsdam Conference.

Czech territories with 50% (red) or more German population in 1935 [95]

According to the West German Schieder commission, there were 4.5 million German civilians present in Bohemia-Moravia in May 1945, including 100,000 from Slovakia and 1.6 million refugees from Poland.[96]

Between 700,000 and 800,000 Germans were affected by wild expulsions between May and August 1945.[97] The expulsions were encouraged by Czechoslovak politicians and were generally executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers and the army.[98]

Transfers of population under the Potsdam agreements lasted from January until October 1946. 1.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled to the American zone, part of what would become West Germany. More than 1 million were expelled to the Soviet zone, which later became East Germany.[99]

About 250,000 ethnic Germans determined crucial for industry were allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia.[100] Male Germans with Czech wives were expelled, often with their spouses, while ethnic German women with Czech husbands were allowed to stay.[101] According to the Schieder commission, Sudeten Germans considered essential to the economy were held as forced labourers.[102]

In 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was between 15,000 and 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported.[103][104][105][106]

The German Red Cross Search Service (Suchdienst) confirmed the deaths of 18,889 people during the expulsions from Czechoslovakia. (Violent deaths 5,556; Suicides 3,411; Deported 705; In camps 6,615; During the wartime flight 629; After wartime flight 1,481; Cause undetermined 379; Other misc. 73.)[107]

In contrast to expulsions from other nations or states, the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary was dictated from outside Hungary.[108] It began on 22 December 1944 when the Soviet Commander-in-Chief ordered the expulsions. Three percent of the German pre-war population (about 20,000 people) had been evacuated by the Volksbund before that. They went to Austria, but many had returned. Overall, 60,000 ethnic Germans had fled.[92]

According to the West German Schieder commission report of 1956, in early 1945 between 30–35,000 ethnic German civilians and 30,000 military POW were arrested and transported from Hungary to the Soviet Union as forced labourers. In some villages, the entire adult population were taken to labour camps in the Donbass. 6,000 died there as a result of hardships and ill-treatment.[109]

Data from the Russian archives, which was based on an actual enumeration, put the number of ethnic Germans registered by the Soviets in Hungary at 50,292 civilians, of whom 31,923 were deported to the USSR for reparations labour implementing the Order 7161. 9% (2,819) were documented as having died.[110]

In 1945, official Hungarian figures showed 477,000 German speakers in Hungary, including German-speaking Jews, 303,000 of whom had declared German nationality. Of the German nationals, 33% were children younger than 12 or elderly people over 60; another 51% were women.[111] On 29 December 1945, the postwar Hungarian Government, obeying the directions of the Potsdam Conference agreements, ordered the expulsion of anyone identified as German in the 1941 census, or had been a member of the Volksbund, the SS, or any other armed German organisation. Accordingly, mass expulsions began.[92] The rural population was affected more than the urban population or those ethnic Germans determined to have needed skills, such as miners.[112][113] Germans married to Hungarians were not expelled, regardless of sex.[101] The first 5,788 expellees departed Wudersch on 19 January 1946.[112]

About 180,000 German-speaking Hungarian citizens were stripped of their citizenship and possessions, and expelled to the Western zones of Germany.[114] By July 1948, 35,000 others had been expelled to the Eastern zone of Germany.[114] Most of the expellees found new homes in the south-west German province of Baden-Württemberg,[115] but many others settled in Bavaria and Hesse. Other research indicates that, between 1945 and 1950, 150,000 were expelled to western Germany, 103,000 to Austria, and none to eastern Germany.[100] During the expulsions, numerous organized protest demonstrations by the Hungarian population took place.[116]

Acquisition of land for distribution to Hungarian refugees and nationals was one of the main reasons stated by the government for the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from Hungary.[113] The botched organisation of the redistribution led to social tensions.[113]

22,445 people were identified as German in the 1949 census. An order of 15 June 1948 halted the expulsions. A governmental decree of 25 March 1950 declared all expulsion orders void, allowing the expellees to return if they so wished.[113] After the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, German victims of expulsion and Soviet forced labour were rehabilitated.[115] Post-Communist laws allowed expellees to be compensated, to return, and to buy property.[117] There were reportedly no tensions between Germany and Hungary regarding expellees.[117]

In 1958 the West German government estimated, based on a demographic analysis, that by 1950 270,000 Germans remained in Hungary; 60,000 had been assimilated into the Hungarian population, and there were 57,000 "unresolved cases" that remained to be clarified.[118] The editor for the section of the 1958 report for Hungary was Wilfried Krallert, a scholar dealing with Balkan affairs since the 1930s, when he was a Nazi Party member. During the war he was an officer in the SS and was directly implicated in the plundering of cultural artifacts in eastern Europe. After the war he was chosen to author the sections of the demographic report on the expulsions from Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. The figure 57,000 "unresolved cases" in Hungary is included in the figure of 2 million dead expellees, which is often cited in official German and historical literature.[119]

After World War II, the Dutch government decided to expel the German expatriates (25,000) living in the Netherlands.[120] Germans, even those with Dutch spouses and children, were labelled as "hostile subjects" ("vijandelijke onderdanen").[120]

The operation began on 10 September 1946 in Amsterdam, when German expatriates and their families were arrested at their homes in the middle of the night and given one hour to pack 50 kg of luggage. They were only allowed to take 100 guilders with them. The remainder of their possessions were seized by the state. They were taken to internment camps near the German border, the largest of which was Mariënbosch, near Nijmegen. About 3,691 Germans (less than 15% of the total number of German expatriates in the Netherlands) were expelled. The Allied forces occupying the Western zone of Germany opposed this operation, fearing that other nations might follow suit.

Throughout 1944 until May 1945, as the Red Army advanced through Eastern Europe and the provinces of eastern Germany, some German civilians were killed in the fighting. While many had already fled ahead of the advancing Soviet Army, frightened by rumours of Soviet atrocities, which in some cases were exaggerated and exploited by Nazi Germany's propaganda,[121] millions still remained.[122] A 2005 study by the Polish Academy of Sciences estimated that during the final months of the war, 4 to 5 million German civilians fled with the retreating German forces, and in mid-1945, 4.5 to 4.6 million Germans remained in the territories under Polish control. By 1950, 3,155,000 had been transported to Germany, 1,043,550 were naturalized as Polish citizens and 170,000 Germans still remained in Poland.[123]

According to the West German Schieder commission of 1953, 5,650,000 Germans remained in Poland in mid-1945, 3,500,000 had been expelled and 910,000 remained in Poland by 1950.[124] According to the Schieder commission, the civilian death toll was 2 million;[125] in 1974, the German Federal Archives estimated the death toll at about 400,000.[126] (The controversy regarding the casualty figures is covered below in the section on casualties.)

During the 1945 military campaign, most of the male German population remaining east of the Oder–Neisse were considered potential combatants and held by Soviet military in detention camps subjected to verification by the NKVD. Members of Nazi party organizations and government officials were segregated and sent to the USSR for forced labour as reparations.[110][127]

In mid-1945, the eastern territories of pre-war Germany were turned over to the Soviet-controlled Polish military forces. Early expulsions were undertaken by the Polish Communist military authorities[128] even before the Potsdam Conference placed them under temporary Polish administration pending the final Peace Treaty,[129] in an effort to ensure later territorial integration into an ethnically homogeneous Poland.[130] The Polish Communists wrote: "We must expel all the Germans because countries are built on national lines and not on multinational ones."[131][132] The Polish government defined Germans as either Reichsdeutsche, people enlisted in first or second Volksliste groups; or those who held German citizenship. About 1.1 million[133] German citizens of Slavic descent were "verified" as "autochthonous" Poles.[134] Of these, most were not expelled; 894,000 chose to migrate to Germany between 1951–82,[135] including most of the Masurians of East Prussia.[136]

Polish boundary post at the Oder–Neisse line in 1945

At the Potsdam Conference (17 July–2 August 1945), the territory to the east of the Oder–Neisse line was assigned to Polish and Soviet Union administration pending the final peace treaty. All Germans had their property confiscated and were placed under restrictive jurisdiction.[134][137] The Silesian voivodeAleksander Zawadzki in part had already expropriated the property of the German Silesians on 26 January 1945, another decree of 2 March expropriated that of all Germans east of the Oder and Neisse, and a subsequent decree of 6 May declared all "abandoned" property as belonging to the Polish state.[138] Germans were also not permitted to hold Polish currency, the only legal currency since July, other than earnings from work assigned to them.[139] The remaining population faced theft and looting, and also in some instances rape and murder, by the Polish Communist-controlled Milicja Obywatelska, in addition to similar acts by criminal gangs that were neither prevented nor prosecuted by the Polish militia and judiciary.[140]

In mid-1945, 4.5 to 4.6 million Germans resided in territory east of the Oder–Neisse Line. By early 1946, 550,000 Germans had already been expelled from there, and 932,000 had been verified as having Polish nationality. In the February 1946 census, 2,288,000 people were classified as Germans and subject to expulsion, and 417,400 were subject to verification action, to determine nationality.[123]:312,452–66 The negatively verified people, who did not succeed in demonstrating their "Polish nationality", were directed for resettlement.[94]

Those Polish citizens who had collaborated or were believed to have collaborated with the Nazis, were considered "traitors of the nation" and sentenced to forced labour prior to being expelled.[73] By 1950, 3,155,000 German civilians had been expelled and 1,043,550 were naturalized as Polish citizens. 170,000[94] Germans considered "indispensable" for the Polish economy were retained until 1956,[137] although almost all had left by 1960.[136] 200,000 Germans in Poland were employed as forced labour in communist-administered camps prior to being expelled from Poland.[123]:312 These included Central Labour Camp Jaworzno, Central Labour Camp Potulice, Łambinowice and Zgoda labour camp. Besides these large camps, numerous other forced labour, punitive and internment camps, urban ghettos and detention centres, sometimes consisting only of a small cellar, were set up.[137]

"resulted in numerous deaths, which cannot be accurately determined because of lack of statistics or falsification. At certain periods, they could be in the tens of percent of the inmate numbers. Those interned are estimated at 200–250,000 German nationals and the indigenous population and deaths might range from 15,000 to 60,000 persons."[142]

Note: The indigenous population were former German citizens who declared Polish ethnicity.[143] Historian R. M. Douglas describes a chaotic and lawless regime in the former German territories in the immediate postwar era. The local population was victimized by criminal elements who arbitrarily seized German property for personal gain. Bilingual people who were on the Volksliste during the war were declared Germans by Polish officials who then seized their property for personal gain.[144]

August 1948, German children deported from the eastern areas taken over by Poland arrive in West Germany.

The Federal Statistical Office of Germany estimated that in mid-1945, 250,000 Germans remained in the northern part of the former East Prussia, which became the Kaliningrad Oblast. They also estimated that more than 100,000 people surviving the Soviet occupation were evacuated to Germany beginning in 1947.[145]

German civilians were held as "reparations labour" by the USSR. Data from the Russian archives, newly published in 2001 and based on an actual enumeration, put the number of German civilians deported from Poland to the USSR in early 1945 for reparations labour at 155,262; 37% (57,586) died in the USSR.[110] The West German Red Cross had estimated in 1964 that 233,000 German civilians were deported to the USSR from Poland as forced labourers, and that 45% (105,000) were dead or missing.[146] The West German Red Cross estimated at that time that 110,000 German civilians were held as forced labour in the Kaliningrad Oblast, where 50,000 were dead or missing.[146] The Soviets deported 7,448 Poles of the Armia Krajowa from Poland. Soviet records indicated that 506 Poles died in captivity.[110]Tomasz Kamusella maintains that in early 1945, 165,000 Germans were transported to the Soviet Union.[147] According to Gerhardt Reichling, an official in the German Finance office, 520,000 German civilians from the Oder–Neisse region were conscripted for forced labour by both the USSR and Poland; he maintains that 206,000 perished.[148]

The attitudes of surviving Poles varied. Many had suffered brutalities and atrocities by the Germans, surpassed only by the German policies against Jews, during the Nazi occupation. The Germans had recently expelled more than a million Poles from territories they annexed during the war.[68] Some Poles engaged in looting and various crimes, including murders, beatings and rapes, against Germans. On the other hand, in many instances Poles, including some who had been made slave labourers by the Germans during the war, protected Germans, for instance by disguising them as Poles.[68] Moreover, in the Opole (Oppeln) region of Upper Silesia, citizens who claimed Polish ethnicity were allowed to remain, even though some, not all, had uncertain nationality, or identified as ethnic Germans. Their status as a national minority was accepted in 1955, along with state subsidies, with regard to economic assistance and education.[149]

The attitude of Soviet soldiers was ambiguous. Many committed atrocities, most notably rape and murder,[69] and did not always distinguish between Poles and Germans, mistreating them equally.[150] Other Soviets, were taken aback by the brutal treatment of the German civilians and tried to protect them.[151]

Richard Overy cites an approximate total of 7.5 million Germans evacuated, migrated, or expelled from Poland between 1944 and 1950.[152]Tomasz Kamusella cites estimates of 7 million expelled in total during both the "wild" and "legal" expulsions from the recovered territories from 1945 to 1948, plus an additional 700,000 from areas of pre-war Poland.[137]

The ethnic German population of Romania in 1939 was estimated at 786,000.[153][154] In 1940 Bessarabia and Bukovina were occupied by the USSR, and the ethnic German population of 130,000 was deported to German-held territory during the Nazi–Soviet population transfers and 80,000 from Romania. 140,000 of these Germans were resettled in German-occupied Poland; in 1945 they were caught up in the flight and expulsion from Poland.[155] Most of the ethnic Germans in Romania resided in Transylvania, the northern part of which was annexed by Hungary during World War II. The pro-German Hungarian government, as well as the pro-German Romanian government of Ion Antonescu allowed Germany to enlist the German population in Nazi-sponsored organizations. During the war 54,000 of the male population was conscripted by Nazi Germany, many into the Waffen-SS.[156] In mid-1944 roughly 100,000 Germans fled from Romania with the retreating German forces.[157] According to the West German Schieder commission report of 1957, 75,000 German civilians were deported to the USSR as forced labour and 15% (approximately 10,000) did not return.[158] Data from the Russian archives which was based on an actual enumeration put the number of ethnic Germans registered by the Soviets in Romania at 421,846 civilians, of whom 67,332 were deported to the USSR for reparations labour, and that 9% (6,260) died.[110]

The roughly 400,000 ethnic Germans who remained in Romania were treated as guilty of collaboration with Nazi Germany and were deprived of their civil liberties and property. Many were impressed into forced labour and deported from their homes to other regions of Romania. In 1948, Romania began a gradual rehabilitation of the ethnic Germans: they were not expelled, and the communist regime gave them the status of a national minority, the only Eastern Bloc country to do so.[159]

In 1958 the West German government estimated, based on a demographic analysis, that by 1950, 253,000 were counted as expellees in Germany or the West, 400,000 Germans still remained in Romania, 32,000 had been assimilated into the Romanian population, and that there were 101,000 "unresolved cases" that remained to be clarified.[160] The figure of 101,000 "unresolved cases" in Romania is included in the total German expulsion dead of 2 million which is often cited in historical literature.[119] 355,000 Germans remained in Romania in 1977. During the 1980s many began to leave, with over 160,000 leaving in 1989 alone. By 2002, the number of ethnic Germans in Romania was 60,000.[92][100]

The Baltic, Bessarabian and ethnic Germans in areas that became Soviet-controlled following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 were resettled to the Third Reich, including annexed areas like Warthegau, during the Nazi-Soviet population exchange. Only a few returned to their former homes when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and temporarily gained control of those areas. These returnees were employed by the Nazi occupation forces to establish a link between the German administration and the local population. Those resettled elsewhere shared the fate of the other Germans in their resettlement area.[161]

The ethnic German minority in the USSR was considered a security risk by the Soviet government, and they were deported during the war in order to prevent their possible collaboration with the Nazi invaders. In August 1941 the Soviet government ordered ethnic Germans to be deported from the European USSR, by early 1942, 1,031,300 Germans were interned in "special settlements" in Central Asia and Siberia[162] Life in the special settlements was harsh and severe, food was limited, and the deported population was governed by strict regulations. Shortages of food plagued the whole Soviet Union and especially the special settlements. According to data from the Soviet archives, by October 1945, 687,300 Germans remained alive in the special settlements;[163] an additional 316,600 Soviet Germans served as labour conscripts during World War II. Soviet Germans were not accepted in the regular armed forces but were employed instead as conscript labour. The labour army members were arranged into worker battalions that followed camp-like regulations and received Gulag rations.[164] In 1945 the USSR deported to the special settlements 203,796 Soviet ethnic Germans who had been previously resettled by Germany in Poland.[165] These post-war deportees increased the German population in the special settlements to 1,035,701 by 1949.[166]

According to J. Otto Pohl, 65,599 Germans perished in the special settlements. He believes that an additional 176,352 unaccounted for people "probably died in the labour army".[167] Under Stalin, Soviet Germans continued to be confined to the special settlements under strict supervision, in 1955 they were rehabilitated but were not allowed to return to the European USSR.[168] The Soviet German population grew despite deportations and forced labour during the war; in the 1939 Soviet census the German population was 1.427 million. By 1959 it had increased to 1.619 million.[169]

The calculations of the West German researcher Gerhard Reichling do not agree to the figures from the Soviet archives. According to Reichling a total of 980,000 Soviet ethnic Germans were deported during the war; he estimated that 310,000 died in forced labour.[170] During the early months of the invasion of the USSR in 1941 the Germans occupied the western regions of the USSR that had German settlements. A total of 370,000 ethnic Germans from the USSR were deported to Poland by Germany during the war. In 1945 the Soviets found 280,000 of these resettlers in Soviet-held territory and returned them to the USSR; 90,000 became refugees in Germany after the war.[170]

A refugee trek of Black Sea Germans during the Second World War in Hungary, July 1944

Those ethnic Germans who remained in the 1939 borders of the Soviet Union occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941 remained where they were until 1943, when the Red Army liberated Soviet territory and the Wehrmacht withdrew westward.[171] From January 1943, most of these ethnic Germans moved in treks to the Warthegau or to Silesia, where they were to settle.[172] Between 250,000 and 320,000 had reached Nazi Germany by the end of 1944.[173] On their arrival, they were placed in camps and underwent 'racial evaluation' by the Nazi authorities, who dispersed those deemed 'racially valuable' as farm workers in the annexed provinces, while those deemed to be of "questionable racial value" were sent to work in Germany.[173] The Red Army captured these areas in early 1945, and 200,000 Soviet Germans had not yet been evacuated by the Nazi authorities,[172] who were still occupied with their 'racial evaluation'.[173] They were regarded by the USSR as Soviet citizens and repatriated to camps and special settlements in the Soviet Union. 70,000 to 80,000 who found themselves in the Soviet occupation zone after the war were also returned to the USSR, based on an agreement with the Western Allies. The death toll during their capture and transportation was estimated at 15% to 30%, and many families were torn apart.[172] The special "German settlements" in the post-war Soviet Union were controlled by the Internal Affairs Commissioner, and the inhabitants had to perform forced labour until the end of 1955. They were released from the special settlements by an amnesty decree of 13 September 1955,[172] and the Nazi collaboration charge was revoked by a decree of 23 August 1964.[174] They were not allowed to return to their former homes and remained in the eastern regions of the USSR, yet no individual's former property was restored.[172][174] Since the 1980s the Soviet and Russian governments have allowed ethnic Germans to emigrate to Germany.

Different situations emerged in northern East Prussia regarding Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad) and the adjacent Memel territory around Memel (Klaipėda). The Königsberg area of East Prussia was annexed by the Soviet Union, becoming an exclave of the Russian Soviet Republic. Memel was integrated into the Lithuanian Soviet Republic. Many Germans were evacuated from East Prussia and the Memel territory by Nazi authorities during Operation Hannibal or fled in panic as the Red Army approached. The remaining Germans were conscripted for forced labour. Ethnic Russians and the families of military staff were settled in the area. In June 1946, 114,070 Germans and 41,029 Soviet citizens were registered as living in the Kaliningrad Oblast, with an unknown number of unregistered Germans ignored. Between June 1945 and 1947, roughly half a million Germans were expelled.[175] Between 24 August and 26 October 1948, 21 transports with a total of 42,094 Germans left the Kaliningrad Oblast for the Soviet Occupation Zone. The last remaining Germans were expelled between November 1949[92] (1,401 people) and January 1950 (7).[176] Thousands of German children, called the "wolf children", had been left orphaned and unattended or died with their parents during the harsh winter without food. Between 1945-47, around 600,000 Soviet citizens settled the oblast.[175]

Before World War II, roughly 500,000 German-speaking people (mostly Danube Swabians) lived in Yugoslavia.[92][177] Most fled during the war or emigrated after 1950, thanks to the "displaced persons" act (of 1948); some were able to emigrate to the United States. During the final months of World War II a majority of the ethnic Germans fled Yugoslavia with the retreating Nazi forces.[178]

After the liberation, Yugoslav Partisans exacted revenge on ethnic Germans for the wartime atrocities of Nazi Germany, in which many ethnic Germans had participated, especially in the Banat area of Serbia. The approximately 200,000 ethnic Germans remaining in Yugoslavia suffered persecution and sustained personal and economic losses. About 7,000 were killed as local populations and partisans took revenge for German wartime atrocities.[92][179] From 1945-48 ethnic Germans were held in labour camps where about 50,000 perished.[179] Those surviving were allowed to emigrate to Germany after 1948.[179]

According to West German figures in late 1944 the Soviets transported 27,000 to 30,000 ethnic Germans, a majority of whom were women aged 18 to 35, to the Ukraine and the Donbass for forced labour; about 20% (5,683) were reported dead or missing.[92][179][180] Data from Russian archives published in 2001, based on an actual enumeration, put the number of German civilians deported from Yugoslavia to the USSR in early 1945 for reparations labour at 12,579, where 16% (1,994) died.[181] After March 1945, a second phase began in which ethnic Germans were massed into villages such as Gakowa and Kruševlje that were converted into labour camps. All furniture was removed, straw placed on the floor, and the expellees housed like animals under military guard, with minimal food and rampant, untreated disease. Families were divided into the unfit women, old, and children, and those fit for slave labour. A total of 166,970 ethnic Germans were interned, and 48,447 (29%) perished.[91] The camp system was shut down in March 1948.[182]

In Slovenia, the ethnic German population at the end of World War II was concentrated in Slovenian Styria, more precisely in Maribor, Celje, and a few other smaller towns (like Ptuj and Dravograd), and in the rural area around Apače on the Austrian border. The second largest ethnic German community in Slovenia was the predominantly rural Gottschee County around Kočevje in Lower Carniola, south of Ljubljana. Smaller numbers of ethnic Germans also lived in Ljubljana and in some western villages in the Prekmurje region. In 1931, the total number of ethnic Germans in Slovenia was around 28,000: around half of them lived in Styria and in Prekmurje, while the other half lived in the Gottschee County and in Ljubljana. In April 1941, southern Slovenia was occupied by Italian troops. By early 1942, ethnic Germans from Gottschee/Kočevje were forcefully transferred to German-occupied Styria by the new German authorities. Most resettled to the Posavje region (a territory along the Sava river between the towns of Brežice and Litija), from where around 50,000 Slovenes had been expelled. Gottschee Germans were generally unhappy about their forced transfer from their historical home region. One reason was that the agricultural value of their new area of settlement was perceived as much lower than the Gottschee area. As German forces retreated before the Yugoslav Partisans, most ethnic Germans fled with them in fear of reprisals. By May 1945, only few Germans remained, mostly in the Styrian towns of Maribor and Celje. The Liberation Front of the Slovenian People expelled most of the remainder after it seized complete control in the region in May 1945.[182]

The Yugoslavs set up internment camps at Sterntal and Teharje. The government nationalized their property on a "decision on the transition of enemy property into state ownership, on state administration over the property of absent people, and on sequestration of property forcibly appropriated by occupation authorities" of 21 November 1944 by the Presidency of the Anti-Fascist Council for the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia.[182][183]

After March 1945, ethnic Germans were placed in so-called "village camps".[184] Separate camps existed for those able to work and for those who were not. In the latter camps, containing mainly children and the elderly, the mortality rate was about 50%. Most of the children under 14 were then placed in state-run homes, where conditions were better, though the German language was banned. These children were later given to Yugoslav families, and not all German parents seeking to reclaim their children in the 1950s were successful.[182]

West German government figures from 1958 put the death toll at 135,800 civilians.[185] A recent study published by the ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia based on an actual enumeration has revised the death toll down to about 58,000. A total of 48,447 people had died in the camps; 7,199 were shot by partisans, and another 1,994 perished in Soviet labour camps.[186] Those Germans still considered Yugoslav citizens were employed in industry or the military, but could buy themselves free of Yugoslav citizenship for the equivalent of three months' salary. By 1950, 150,000 of the Germans from Yugoslavia were classified as "expelled" in Germany, another 150,000 in Austria, 10,000 in the United States, and 3,000 in France.[182] According to West German figures 82,000 ethnic Germans remained in Yugoslavia in 1950.[100] After 1950, most emigrated to Germany or were assimilated into the local population.[170]

The population of Kehl (12,000 people), on the east bank of the Rhine opposite Strasbourg, fled and was evacuated in the course of the Liberation of France, on 23 November 1944.[187] French forces occupied the town in March 1945 and prevented the inhabitants from returning until 1953.[187][188]

Fearing a Nazi Fifth Column, between 1941 and 1945 the US government facilitated the expulsion of 4,058 German citizens from 15 Latin American countries to internment camps in Texas and Louisiana. Subsequent investigations showed many of the internees to be harmless, and three-quarters of them were returned to Germany during the war in exchange for citizens of the Americas, while the remainder returned to their homes in Latin America.[189]

At the start of World War II, colonists with German citizenship were rounded up by the British and sent, together with Italian and Hungarian enemy aliens, to internment camps in Waldheim and Bethlehem of Galilee. 661 Templers were deported to Australia via Egypt on 31 July 1941, leaving 345 in Palestine. Internment continued in Tatura, Victoria, Australia, until 1946-47. In 1962 the State of Israel paid 54 million Deutsche Marks in compensation to property owners whose assets were nationalized.

Estimates of total deaths of German civilians in the flight and expulsions, including Forced labour of Germans in the Soviet Union, range from 500,000 to a maximum of 3.0 million people.[190] Although the German government's official estimate of deaths due to the flight and expulsions has stood at 2 million since the 1960s, the publication in 1987-89 of previously classified West German studies has led some historians to the conclusion that the actual number was much lower – in the range of 500,000 to 600,000. English language sources have put the death toll at 2 to 3 million based on the West German government figures from the 1960s.[191][192][193][194][195][196][197][198][199][200]

In 1950 West German Government made a preliminary estimate of 3.0 million missing people (1.5 million in prewar Germany and 1.5 million in Eastern Europe) whose fate needed to be clarified.[201] These figures were superseded by the publication of the 1958 study by the Statistisches Bundesamt.

In 1953 West German government ordered a survey by the Suchdienst (search service) of the German churches to trace the fate of 16.2 million people in the area of the expulsions, the survey was completed in 1964 but kept secret until 1987. The search service was able to confirm 473,013 civilian deaths, there were an additional 1,905,991 cases of persons whose fate could not be determined.[202]

From 1954 to 1961 Schieder commission issued five reports on the flight and expulsions. The head of the commission Theodor Schieder was a rehabilitated former Nazi party member who was involved in the preparation of the Nazi Generalplan Ost to colonize eastern Europe, The commission estimated a total death toll of about 2.3 million civilians including 2 million east of the Oder Neisse line.[203]

The figures of the Schieder commission were superseded by the publication in 1958 of the study by the West German government Statistisches Bundesamt, Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste (The German Expulsion Casualties). The authors of the report included former Nazi party members, de:Wilfried Krallert, Walter Kuhn and de:Alfred Bohmann. The Statistisches Bundesamt put losses at 2,225,000 (1.339 million in prewar Germany and 886,000 in Eastern Europe).[204] In 1961 the West German government published slightly revised figures that put losses at 2,111,000 (1,225,000 in prewar Germany and 886,000 in Eastern Europe)[205]

In 1969, the federal West German government ordered a further study to be conducted by the German Federal Archives, which was finished in 1974 and kept secret until 1989. The study was commissioned to survey crimes against humanity such as deliberate killings, which according to the report included deaths caused by military activity in the 1944–45 campaign, forced labor in the USSR and in civilians kept in post war internment camps. The authors maintained that the figures included only those deaths caused violent acts and inhumanities (Unmenschlichkeiten) and do not include post war deaths due to malnutrition and disease. Also not included are those who were raped or suffered mistreatment and did not die immediately. They estimated 600,000 deaths (150,000 during flight and evacuations, 200,000 as forced labour in the USSR and 250,000 in post war internment camps. By region 400,000 east of Oder Neisse line, 130,000 in Czechoslovakia and 80,000 in Yugoslavia). No figures were given for Romania and Hungary.[206]

A 1986 study by Gerhard Reichling "Die deutschen Vertriebenen in Zahlen" (the German expellees in figures) concluded 2,020,000 ethnic Germans perished after the war including 1,440,000 as a result of the expulsions and 580,000 deaths due to deportation as forced labourers in the Soviet Union. Reichling was an employee of the Federal Statistical Office who was involved in the study of German expulsion statistics since 1953.[207] The Reichling study is cited by the German government to support their estimate of 2 million expulsion deaths[10]

The West German figure of 2 million deaths in the flight and expulsions was widely accepted by historians in the West prior to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War.[191][192][193][194][195][200][208][197][209][210] The recent disclosure of the German Federal Archives study and the Search Service figures have caused some scholars in Germany and Poland to question the validity of the figure of 2 million deaths; they estimate the actual total at 500–600,000.[211][212][213]

The German government continues to maintain that the figure of 2 million deaths is correct.[214] The issue of the "expellees" has been a contentious one in German politics, with the Federation of Expellees staunchly defending the higher figure.[215]

In 2000 the German historian Rüdiger Overmans published a study of German military casualties, his research project did not investigate civilian expulsion deaths.[216] In 1994, Overmans provided a critical analysis of the previous studies by German government which he believes are unreliable. Overmans maintains that the studies of expulsion deaths by the German government lack adequate support, he maintains that there are more arguments for the lower figures than for the higher figures. ("Letzlich sprechen also mehr Argumente für die niedrigerte als für die höhere Zahl.")[190]

In a 2006 interview, Overmans maintained that new research is needed to clarify the fate of those reported as missing.[217] He found the 1965 figures of the Search Service to be unreliable because they include non-Germans; the figures according to Overmans include military deaths; the numbers of surviving people, natural deaths and births after the war in Eastern Europe are unreliable because the Communist governments in Eastern Europe did not extend full cooperation to West German efforts to trace people in Eastern Europe; the reports given by eyewitnesses surveyed are not reliable in all cases. In particular, Overmans maintains that the figure of 1.9 million missing people was based on incomplete information and is unreliable.[218] Overmans found the 1958 demographic study to be unreliable because it inflated the figures of ethnic Germans deaths by including missing people of doubtful German ethnic identity who survived the war in Eastern Europe; the figures of military deaths is understated; the numbers of surviving people, natural deaths and births after the war in Eastern Europe are unreliable because the Communist governments in Eastern Europe did not extend full cooperation to West German efforts to trace people in Eastern Europe.[190]

Overmans maintains that the 600,000 deaths found by the German Federal Archives in 1974 is only a rough estimate of those killed, not a definitive figure. He pointed out that some deaths were not reported because there were no surviving eyewitnesses of the events; also there was no estimate of losses in Hungary, Romania and the USSR.[219]

Overmans conducted a research project that studied the casualties of the German military during the war and found that the previous estimate of 4.3 million dead and missing, especially in the final stages of the war, was about one million short of the actual toll. In his study Overmans researched only military deaths, his project did not investigate civilian expulsion deaths; he merely noted the difference between the 2.2 million dead estimated in the 1958 demographic study, of which 500,000 have so far have been verified.[220] He found that German military deaths from areas in Eastern Europe were about 1.444 million, and thus 334,000 higher than the 1.1 million figure in the 1958 demographic study, lacking documents available today included the figures with civilian deaths. Overmans believes this will reduce the number of civilian deaths in the expulsions. Overmans further pointed out that the 2.225 million number estimated by the 1958 study would imply that the casualty rate among the expellees was equal to or higher than that of the military, which he found implausible.[221]

In 2006, Haar called into question the validity of the official government figure of 2 million expulsion deaths in an article in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.[222] Since then Haar has published three articles in academic journals that covered the background of the research by the West German government on the expulsions.[223][224][225][226]

Haar maintains that all reasonable estimates of deaths from expulsions lie between around 500,000 and 600,000, based on the information of Red Cross Search Service and German Federal Archives. Harr pointed out that some members of the Schieder commission and officials of the Statistisches Bundesamt involved in the study of the expulsions were involved in the Nazi plan to colonize Eastern Europe. Haar posits that figures have been inflated in Germany due to the Cold War and domestic German politics, and he maintains that the 2.225 million number relies on improper statistical methodology and incomplete data, particularly in regard to the expellees who arrived in East Germany. Haar questions the validity of population balances in general. He maintains that 27,000 German Jews who were Nazi victims are included in the West German figures. He rejects the statement by the German government that the figure of 500–600,000 deaths omitted those people who died of disease and hunger, and has stated that this is a "mistaken interpretation" of the data. He maintains that deaths due to disease, hunger and other conditions are already included in the lower numbers. According to Haar the numbers were set too high for decades, for postwar political reasons.[226][227][228][229]

In 2001, Polish researcher Bernadetta Nitschke puts total losses for Poland at 400,000 (the same figure as the German Federal Archive study), she noted that historians in Poland have maintained that most of the deaths occurred during the flight and evacuation during the war, the deportation to the USSR for forced labour and after the resettlement due to the harsh conditions in the Soviet occupation zone in postwar Germany.[230] Polish demographer Piotr Eberhardt found that, "Generally speaking, the German estimates…are not only highly arbitrary, but also clearly tendentious in presentation of the German losses." He maintains that the German government figures from 1958 overstated the total number of the ethnic Germans living in Poland prior to war as well as the total civilian deaths due to the expulsions. For example, Eberhardt points out that "the total number of Germans in Poland is given as equal 1,371,000. According to the Polish census of 1931, there were altogether only 741,000 Germans in the entire territory of Poland."[231]

German historians Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahn published a detailed study of the flight and expulsions that is sharply critical of German accounts of the Cold War era. The Hahns regard the official German figure of 2 million deaths as an historical myth, lacking foundation. They place the ultimate blame for the mass flight and expulsion on the wartime policy of the Nazis in Eastern Europe. The Hahns maintain that most of the reported 473,013 deaths occurred during the Nazi organized flight and evacuation during the war, and the forced labour of Germans in the Soviet Union; they point out that there are 80,522 confirmed deaths in the postwar internment camps. They put the postwar losses in eastern Europe at a fraction of the total losses: Poland-15,000 deaths from 1945 to 1949 in internment camps; Czechoslovakia- 15,000–30,000 dead, including 4,000–5,000 in internment camps and ca. 15,000 in the Prague uprising; Yugoslavia-5,777 deliberate killings and 48,027 deaths in internment camps; Denmark- 17,209 dead in internment camps; Hungary and Romania - no postwar losses reported. The Hahns point out that the official 1958 figure of 273,000 deaths for Czechoslovakia was prepared by Alfred Bohmann, a former Nazi Party member who had served in the wartime SS. Bohmann was a journalist for an ultra-nationalist Sudeten-Deutsch newspaper in postwar West Germany. The Hahns believe the population figures of ethnic Germans for eastern Europe include German-speaking Jews killed in the Holocaust.[232] They believe that the fate of German-speaking Jews in Eastern Europe deserves the attention of German historians. ("Deutsche Vertreibungshistoriker haben sich mit der Geschichte der jüdischen Angehörigen der deutschen Minderheiten kaum beschäftigt.")[232]

In 1995, research by a joint German and Czech commission of historians found that the previous demographic estimates of 220,000 to 270,000 deaths in Czechoslovakia to be overstated and based on faulty information. They concluded that the death toll was at least 15,000 people and that it could range up to a maximum of 30,000 dead, assuming that not all deaths were reported.[103]

The German government still maintains that the figure of 2-2.5 million expulsion deaths is correct. In 2005 the German Red Cross Search Service put the death toll at 2,251,500 but did not provide details for this estimate.[233]

On 29 November 2006, State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Christoph Bergner, outlined the stance of the respective governmental institutions on Deutschlandfunk saying that the numbers presented by the German government and others are not contradictory to the numbers cited by Haar, and that the below 600,000 estimate comprises the deaths directly caused by atrocities during the expulsion measures and thus only includes people who on the spot were raped, beaten, or else brought to death, while the above two millions estimate includes people who on their way to postwar Germany died of epidemics, hunger, cold, air raids and the like.[234]

In 1998, Rudolph Rummel examined the data by only English-language authors published before 1991 and found a range from 528,000 to 3,724,000 deaths due to the expulsions. In his own analysis of these sources, he calculated the total postwar expulsion deaths to be 1,863,000.[235] He estimated an additional one million civilians perished during the wartime flight and evacuation before the expulsions.[235]

A German lawyer, Heinz Nawratil, published a study of the expulsions entitled Schwarzbuch der Vertreibung ("Black Book of Expulsion").[236] Nawratil claimed the death toll was 2.8 million: he includes the losses of 2.2 million listed in the 1958 West German study, and an estimated 250,000 deaths of Germans resettled in Poland during the war, plus 350,000 ethnic Germans in the USSR. In 1987, German historian Martin Broszat (former head of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich) described Nawratil's writings as "polemics with a nationalist-rightist point of view and exaggerates in an absurd manner the scale of 'expulsion crimes'." Broszat found Nawratil's book to have "factual errors taken out of context"[237][238] German historian Thomas E. Fischer calls the book "problematic".[239] James Bjork (Department of History, King's College London) has criticized German educational DVDs based on Nawratil's book.[240]

Those who arrived were in bad condition—particularly during the harsh winter of 1945–46, when arriving trains carried "the dead and dying in each carriage (other dead had been thrown from the train along the way)".[241] After experiencing Red Army atrocities, Germans in the expulsion areas were subject to harsh punitive measures by Yugoslav partisans and in post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia.[242] Beatings, rapes and murders accompanied the expulsions.[241][242] Some had experienced massacres, such as the Ústí (Aussig) massacre, in which 80–100 ethnic Germans died, or Postoloprty massacre, or conditions like those in the Upper Silesian Camp Łambinowice (Lamsdorf), where interned Germans were exposed to sadistic practices and at least 1,000 died.[242] Many expellees had experienced hunger and disease, separation from family members, loss of civil rights and familiar environment, and sometimes internment and forced labour.[242]

Once they arrived, they found themselves in a country devastated by war. Housing shortages lasted until the 1960s, which along with other shortages led to conflicts with the local population.[243][244] The situation eased only with the West German economic boom in the 1950s that drove unemployment rates close to zero.[245]

France did not participate in the Potsdam Conference, so it felt free to approve some of the Potsdam Agreements and dismiss others. France maintained the position that it had not approved the expulsions and therefore was not responsible for accommodating and nourishing the destitute expellees in its zone of occupation. While the French military government provided for the few refugees who arrived before July 1945 in the area that became the French zone, it succeeded in preventing entrance by later-arriving ethnic Germans deported from the East.[246]

Refugees in Berlin, 27 June 1945

Britain and the US protested against the actions of the French military government but had no means to force France to bear the consequences of the expulsion policy agreed upon by American, British and Soviet leaders in Potsdam. France persevered with its argument to clearly differentiate between war-related refugees and post-war expellees. In December 1946 it absorbed into its zone German refugees from Denmark,[246] where 250,000 Germans had traveled by sea between February and May 1945 to take refuge from the Soviets. These were refugees from the eastern parts of Germany, not expellees; Danes of German ethnicity remained untouched and Denmark did not expel them. With this humanitarian act the French saved many lives, due to the high death toll German refugees faced in Denmark.[247][248][249]

Until mid-1945, the Allies had not reached an agreement on how to deal with the expellees. France suggested immigration to South America and Australia and the settlement of 'productive elements' in France, while the Soviets' SMAD suggested a resettlement of millions of expellees in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.[250]

The Soviets, who encouraged and partly carried out the expulsions, offered little cooperation with humanitarian efforts, thereby requiring the Americans and Britons to absorb the expellees in their zones of occupation. In contradiction with the Potsdam Agreements, the Soviets neglected their obligation to provide supplies for the expellees. In Potsdam, it was agreed[251] that 15% of all equipment dismantled in the Western zones—especially from the metallurgical, chemical and machine manufacturing industries—would be transferred to the Soviets in return for food, coal, potash (a basic material for fertiliser), timber, clay products, petroleum products, etc. The Western deliveries started in 1946, but this turned out to be a one-way street. The Soviet deliveries—desperately needed to provide the expellees with food, warmth, and basic necessities and to increase agricultural production in the remaining cultivation area—did not materialize. Consequently, the US stopped all deliveries on 3 May 1946,[252] while the expellees from the areas under Soviet rule were deported to the West until the end of 1947.

In the British and US zones the supply situation worsened considerably, especially in the British zone. Due to its location on the Baltic, the British zone already harbored a great number of refugees who had come by sea, and the already modest rations had to be further shortened by a third in March 1946. In Hamburg, for instance, the average living space per capita, reduced by air raids from 13.6 square metres in 1939 to 8.3 in 1945, was further reduced to 5.4 square metres in 1949 by billeting refugees and expellees.[253] In May 1947, Hamburg trade unions organized a strike against the small rations, with protesters complaining about the rapid absorption of expellees.[254]

The US and Britain had to import food into their zones, even as Britain was financially exhausted and dependent on food imports having fought Nazi Germany for the entire war, including as the sole opponent from June 1940 to June 1941 (the period when Poland and France were defeated, the Soviet Union supported Nazi Germany, and the United States had not yet entered the war). Consequently, Britain had to incur additional debt to the US, and the US had to spend more for the survival of its zone, while the Soviets gained applause among Eastern Europeans — many of whom were impoverished by the war and German occupation — who plundered the belongings of expellees, often before they were actually expelled. Since the Soviet Union was the only power among the Allies that allowed and/or encouraged the looting and robbery in the area under its military influence, the perpetrators and profiteers blundered into a situation in which they became dependent on the perpetuation of Soviet rule in their countries to not be dispossessed of the booty and to stay unpunished. With ever more expellees sweeping into post-war Germany, the Allies moved towards a policy of assimilation, which was believed to be the best way to stabilise Germany and ensure peace in Europe by preventing the creation of a marginalised population.[250] This policy led to the granting of German citizenship to the ethnic German expellees who had held citizenship of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, etc. before World War II.[citation needed]

Expellee organisations demonstrate in Bonn, capital of West Germany, in 1951

When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, a law was drafted on 24 August 1952 that was primarily intended to ease the financial situation of the expellees. The law, termed the Lastenausgleichsgesetz, granted partial compensation and easy credit to the expellees; the loss of their civilian property had been estimated at 299.6 billion Deutschmarks (out of a total loss of German property due to the border changes and expulsions of 355.3 billion Deutschmarks).[255] Administrative organisations were set up to integrate the expellees into post-war German society. While the Stalinist regime in the Soviet occupation zone did not allow the expellees to organise, in the Western zones expellees over time established a variety of organizations, including the All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights.[256] The most prominent—still active today—is the Federation of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen, or BdV).

"War children" of German ancestry in Western and Northern Europe[edit]

In countries occupied by Nazi Germany during the war, sexual relations (including rape) between Wehrmacht soldiers and native women resulted in the birth of significant numbers of children. Couplings of German soldiers and native women were particularly common in countries whose population was not dubbed "inferior" (Untermensch) by the Nazis. After the Wehrmacht's withdrawal, these women and their children of German descent were often ill-treated.[257][258] Although plans were made in Norway to expel the children and their mothers to Australia, the plans never materialised. For many war children, the situation would ease only decades after the war.[259][260][261]

With at least[262] 12 million[86][263][264] Germans directly involved, possibly 14 million[243][265] or more,[266] it was the largest movement or transfer of any single ethnic population in European history[264][267][268] and the largest among the post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe (which displaced 20 to 31 million people in total).[263]

The exact number of Germans expelled after the war is still unknown, because most recent research provides a combined estimate which includes those who were evacuated by the German authorities, fled or were killed during the war. It is estimated that between 12 and 14 million German citizens and foreign ethnic Germans and their descendants were displaced from their homes. The exact number of casualties is still unknown and is difficult to establish due to the chaotic nature of the last months of the war. Census figures placed the total number of ethnic Germans still living in Eastern Europe in 1950, after the major expulsions were complete, at approximately 2.6 million, about 12 percent of the pre-war total.[100]

The expulsions created major social disruptions in the receiving territories, which were tasked with providing housing and employment for millions of refugees. West Germany established a ministry dedicated to the problem, and several laws created a legal framework. The expellees established several organisations, some demanding compensation. Their grievances, while remaining controversial, were incorporated into public discourse.[285] During 1945 the British press aired concerns over the refugees' situation;[286] this was followed by limited discussion of the issue during the Cold War outside West Germany.[287] East Germany sought to avoid alienating the Soviet Union and its neighbours; the Polish and Czechoslovakian governments characterised the expulsions as "a just punishment for Nazi crimes".[285] Western analysts were inclined to see the Soviet Union and its satellites as a single entity, disregarding the national disputes that had preceded the Cold War.[288] The fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany opened the door to a renewed examination of the expulsions in both scholarly and political circles.[289] A factor in the ongoing nature of the dispute may be the relatively large proportion of German citizens who were among the expellees and/or their descendants, estimated at about 20% in 2000.[290]

International law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20th century. Before World War II, several major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties and had the support of international bodies such as the League of Nations. The tide started to turn when the charter of the Nuremberg trials of German Nazi leaders declared forced deportation of civilian populations to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity, and this opinion was progressively adopted and extended through the remainder of the century. Underlying the change was the trend to assign rights to individuals, thereby limiting the rights of nation-states to impose fiats which could adversely affect such individuals. The Charter of the then-newly formed United Nations stated that its Security Council could take no enforcement actions regarding measures taken against World War II "enemy states", defined as enemies of a Charter signatory in WWII.[291] The Charter did not preclude action in relation to such enemies "taken or authorized as a result of that war by the Governments having responsibility for such action."[292] Thus, the Charter did not invalidate or preclude action against World War II enemies following the war.[292] This argument is contested by Alfred de Zayas, an American professor of international law.[293]ICRC's legal adviser Jean-Marie Henckaerts posited that the contemporary expulsions conducted by the Allies of World War II themselves were the reason why expulsion issues were included neither in the UN Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, nor in the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950, and says it "may be called 'a tragic anomaly' that while deportations were outlawed at Nuremberg they were used by the same powers as a 'peacetime measure'".[294] It was only in 1955 that the Settlement Convention regulated expulsions, yet only in respect to expulsions of individuals of the states who signed the convention.[294] The first international treaty condemning mass expulsions was a document issued by the Council of Europe on 16 September 1963, Protocol No 4 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Securing Certain Rights and Freedoms Other than Those Already Included in the Convention and in the First Protocol,[294] stating in Article 4: "collective expulsion of aliens is prohibited."[295] This protocol entered into force on 2 May 1968, and as of 1995 was ratified by 19 states.[295]

There is now general consensus about the legal status of involuntary population transfers: "Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law."[296] No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-way transfers, since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others. Although the signatories to the Potsdam Agreements and the expelling countries may have considered the expulsions to be legal under international law at the time, there are historians and scholars in international law and human rights who argue that the expulsions of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe should now be considered as episodes of ethnic cleansing, and thus a violation of human rights. For example, Timothy V. Waters[who?] argues in "On the Legal Construction of Ethnic Cleansing" that if similar circumstances arise in the future, the precedent of the expulsions of the Germans without legal redress would also allow the future ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law.[297]

In November 2000, a major conference on ethnic cleansing in the 20th century was held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, along with the publication of a book containing participants' conclusions.[301]

The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights José Ayala Lasso of Ecuador endorsed the establishment of the Centre Against Expulsions in Berlin.[302] José Ayala Lasso recognized the "expellees" as victims of gross violations of human rights.[303] De Zayas, a member of the advisory board of the Centre Against Expulsions, endorses the full participation of the organisation representing the expellees, the Bund der Vertriebenen (Federation of Expellees), in the Centre in Berlin.[304]

A Centre Against Expulsions was to be set up in Berlin by the German government based on an initiative and with active participation of the German Federation of Expellees. The Centre's creation has been criticized in Poland.[305] It was strongly opposed by the Polish government and president Lech Kaczyński. Former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk restricted his comments to a recommendation that Germany pursue a neutral approach at the museum.[305][306] The museum apparently did not materialize. The only project along the same lines in Germany is "Visual Sign" (Sichtbares Zeichen) under the auspices of the Stiftung Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung (SFVV).[307] Several members of two consecutive international Advisory (scholar) Councils criticised some activities of the foundation and the new Director Winfried Halder resigned. There is no Advisory Council since 4 November 2015 and Uwe Neumärker is an interim director.

British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that although the expulsions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe was done in an extremely brutal manner that could not be defended, the basic aim of expelling the ethnic German population of Poland and Czechoslovakia was justified by the subversive role played by the German minorities before World War II.[309] Evans wrote that under the Weimar Republic the vast majority of ethnic Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia made it clear that they were not loyal to the states they happened to live under, and under the Third Reich the German minorities in Eastern Europe were willing tools of German foreign policy.[309] Evans also wrote that many areas of eastern Europe featured a jumble of various ethnic groups aside from Germans, and that it was the destructive role played by ethnic Germans as instruments of Nazi Germany that led to their expulsion after the war.[309] Evans concluded by positing that the expulsions were justified as they put an end to a major problem that plagued Europe before the war; that gains to the cause of peace were a further benefit of the expulsions; and that if the Germans had been allowed to remain in Eastern Europe after the war, West Germany would have used their presence to make territorial claims against Poland and Czechoslovakia, and that given the Cold War, this could have helped cause World War III.[309]

In January 1990, President of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, requested forgiveness on his country's behalf, using the term expulsion rather than transfer.[311][312] Public approval for Havel's stance was limited; in a 1996 opinion poll, 86% of Czechs stated they would not support a party that endorsed such an apology.[313] The expulsion issue surfaced in 2002 during the Czech Republic's application for membership in the European Union, since the authorisation decrees issued by Edvard Beneš had not been formally renounced.[314]

^ abKati Tonkin reviewing Jurgen Tampke's "Czech-German Relations and the Politics of Central Europe: From Bohemia to the EU", The Australian Journal of Politics and History, March 2004 Findarticles.comArchived 22 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine.; accessed 6 December 2014.

^Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany: 1840–1945. Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 449

^Jane Boulden, Will Kymlicka, International Approaches to Governing Ethnic Diversity Oxford UP 2015

^ abFritsch-Bournazel, Renata. Europe and German Unification: Germans on the East-West Divide, 1992, p. 77; ISBN0-85496-684-6, ISBN978-0-85496-684-4: The Soviet Union and the new Communist governments of the countries where these Germans had lived tried between 1945 and 1947 to eliminate the problem of minority populations that in the past had formed an obstacle to the development of their own national identity.

^Karl Cordell & Andrzej Antoszewski, Poland and the European Union (section: "Situation in Poland)"), 2000, p. 166; ISBN0-415-23885-4, ISBN978-0-415-23885-4; (Situation in Poland: "Almost all Germans were held personally responsible for the policies of the Nazi party.")

^Tragic was the fate of Czechoslovaks of German ethnicity and Jewish religion. They were clearly victims of the Nazi occupation but nevertheless qualified to be denaturalised, if they had declared their native language to be German in the census of 1930. In 1945 Czechoslovakian nationalists and communists regarded this entry in the forms as an act of disloyalty against the republic. Cf. Reuven Assor, ""Deutsche Juden" in der Tschechoslowakei 1945–1948", Odsun: Die Vertreibung der Sudetendeutschen; Dokumentation zu Ursachen, Planung und Realisierung einer 'ethnischen Säuberung' in der Mitte Europas, 1848/49 – 1945/46, Alois Harasko & Roland Hoffmann (eds.), Munich: Sudetendeutsches Archiv, 2000, pp. 299seqq.

^"Text of Churchill Speech in Commons on Soviet–Polish Frontier". The United Press. 15 December 1944.

^(Karski's 1943 reference to "Poland" meant the pre-war a.k.a. 1937 border of Poland.)R.J. Rummel; Irving Louis Horowitz (1997). Death by Government. Transaction Publishers. p. 302. ISBN978-1-56000-927-6. I would rather be frank with you, Mr. President. Nothing on earth will stop the Poles from taking some kind of revenge on the Germans after the Nazi collapse. There will be some terrorism, probably short-lived, but it will be unavoidable. And I think this will be a sort of encouragement for all the Germans in Poland to go west, to Germany proper, where they belong.

^ abcTimothy Snyder, Journal of Cold War Studies, volume 5, issue 3, Forum on Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944–1948, edited by Philipp Ther and Ana Siljak, Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001; Quote: "By 1943, for example, Polish and Czech politicians across the political spectrum were convinced of the desirability of the postwar expulsion of Germans. After 1945 a democratic Czechoslovak government and a Communist Polish government pursued broadly similar policies toward their German minorities. (...) Taken together, and in comparison to the chapters on the Polish expulsion of the Germans, these essays remind us of the importance of politics in the decision to engage in ethnic cleansing. It will not do, for example, to explain the similar Polish and Czechoslovak policies by similar experiences of occupation. The occupation of Poland was incomparably harsher, yet the Czechoslovak policy was (if anything) more vengeful. (...) Revenge is a broad and complex set of motivations and is subject to manipulation and appropriation. The personal forms of revenge taken against people identified as Germans or collaborators were justified by broad legal definitions of these groups..." FAS.harvard.edu; accessed 6 December 2014.

^"Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa", Das Schicksal der Deutschen in Ungarn: Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, pp. 44, 72. (in German) The editor of this volume of the Schieder commission report was de:Fritz Valjavec, a scholar dealing with Balkan affairs since the 1930s when he belonged to the Nazi Party. During the war he was an officer in the SS, and was directly implicated in the mass murder of Jews as a member of Einsatzgruppe D in Czernowitz. After the war, he was rehabilitated and selected to author the report on the expulsions from Hungary.[citation needed]

^Matthew J. Gibney & Randall Hansen, Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present, 2005, p. 199; ISBN1-57607-796-9: "The Poles began driving Germans out of their houses with a brutality that had by then almost become commonplace: People were beaten, shot and raped. Even Soviet soldiers were taken aback, and some protected the German civilians."

^Overy, ibid. as: from East Prussia – 1.4 million to West Germany, 609,000 to East Germany; from West Prussia – 230,000 to West Germany, 61,000 to East Germany; from the former German provinces east of the Oder-Neisse, encompassing most of Silesia, Pomerania and East Brandenburg – 3.2 million to West Germany, 2 million to East Germany.

^Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50, Statistisches Bundesamt, Wiesbaden (ed.), Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1958(in German); the editor for the section of the 1958 report for Romania was de:Wilfried Krallert, a scholar dealing with Balkan affairs since the 1930s when he was Nazi party member, during the war he was an officer in the SS who was directly implicated in the plundering of cultural artifacts in eastern Europe[where?]. After the war he was rehabilitated [clarification needed] and chosen to author the sections of the demographic report on the expulsions from Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.

^Conseil de l'Europe Assemblée parlementaire Session Strasbourg (Council of the European Union in Straßburg), Documents, Document 7172: Report on the situation of the German ethnic minority in the former Soviet Union, Council of Europe, 1995, p. 7

^ abcdeConseil de l'Europe Assemblée parlementaire Session Strasbourg (Council of the European Union in Straßburg), Documents, Document 7172: Report on the situation of the German ethnic minority in the former Soviet Union, Council of Europe, 1995, p. 8; ISBN92-871-2725-5Google.de

^Sir John Keegan, The Second World War, 1989 - (3.1 million including 1.0 million during wartime flight)

^ abSteffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, The Expulsion of German Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1. pp. 4- (2,000,000)

^Willi Kammerer & Anja Kammerer, Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste – 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin, Dienststelle 2005(in German) (published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross; the forward to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily)

^Christoph Bergner, Secretary of State in Germany's Bureau for Inner Affairs, outlines the stance of the respective governmental institutions on Deutschlandfunk on 29 November 2006. [5], dradio.de; accessed 17 November 2016.(in German)

^Wasserstein, Bernard. Barbarism and civilization: a history of Europe in our time, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 419: "largest population movement between European countries in the twentieth century and one of the largest of all time"; ISBN0-19-873074-8

^De Zayas' entry "Forced Population Transfers", Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (Oxford University Press, online September 2008) and in his article "International Law and Mass Population Transfers", Harvard International Law Journal (1975), pp. 207–58.

German statistics (Statistical and graphical data illustrating German population movements in the aftermath of the Second World War published in 1966 by the West German Ministry of Refugees and Displaced Persons)

Grau, Karl F. Silesian Inferno, War Crimes of the Red Army on its March into Silesia in 1945, Valley Forge, PA: The Landpost Press, 1992; ISBN1-880881-09-8

1.
Potsdam Agreement
–
It also included Germanys demilitarisation, reparations and the prosecution of war criminals. Executed as a communiqué, the Agreement was not a treaty according to international law. It was superseded by the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany signed on 12 September 1990,45 years later. After the Second World War, and the Tehran, Casablanca and Yalta Conferences, the Allies by the Berlin Declaration of June 5,1945, had assumed supreme authority over Germany. In the Three Power Conference of Berlin from 17 July to 2 August 1945, they agreed to and adopted the Protocol of the Proceedings, August 1,1945, the Provisional Government of the French Republic agreed with reservations on August 4. In the Potsdam Agreement the Allies agree, Establishment of a Council of Foreign Ministers, see the London Conference of Foreign Ministers and the Moscow Conference which took place later in 1945. The principles to govern the treatment of Germany in the control period. See European Advisory Commission and Allied Control Council A, treatment of Germany as a single unit. Reduction or destruction of all civilian heavy-industry with war-potential, such as shipbuilding, machine production, restructuring of German economy towards agriculture and light-industry. This section covered reparation claims of the USSR from the Soviet occupation zone in Germany, all but thirty submarines to be sunk and the rest of the German Navy was to be divided equally between the three powers. The German merchant marine was to be divided equally between the three powers, and they would distribute some of those ships to the other Allies. But until the end of the war with the Empire of Japan all the ships would remain under the authority of the Combined Shipping Adjustment Board, City of Königsberg and the adjacent area. The United States and Britain declared that they would support the transfer of Königsberg, the Three Governments reaffirm their intention to bring these criminals to swift and sure justice. The first list of defendants will be published before 1st September, Austria, The government of Austria was to be decided after British and American forces entered Vienna, and that Austria should not pay any reparations. Poland There should be a Provisional Government of National Unity recognised by all three powers, and that those Poles who were serving in British Army formations should be free to return to Poland, conclusion on peace treaties and admission to the United Nations organization. See Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers which took place later in 1945, further he three Governments have also charged the Council of Foreign Ministers with the task of preparing peace treaties for Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary and Romania. The conclusion of Peace Treaties with recognized democratic governments in these States will also enable the three Governments to support applications from them for membership of the United Nations, territorial Trusteeship Italian former colonies would be decided in connection with the preparation of a peace treaty for Italy. Like most of the other former European Axis powers the Italian peace treaty was signed at the 1947 Paris Peace Conference and they agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner

2.
Evacuation of East Prussia
–
It is not to be confused with the expulsion after the war had ended, under Soviet occupation. The evacuation, which had delayed for months, was initiated due to fear of the Red Army advances during the East Prussian Offensive. Some parts of the evacuation were planned as a military necessity, however, many refugees took to the roads on their own initiative because of reported Soviet atrocities against Germans in the areas under Soviet control. The Soviet forces took control of East Prussia in May 1945, a large part of the German civil population of about 2.5 million managed to evacuate, though about 25, 000–30,000 were killed during the Soviet offensive. The Polish census of 1950 indicated that 164,000 of the former German population remained in Southern East Prussia, the Red Army initiated an offensive into East Prussia in October 1944, but it was temporarily driven back two weeks later. Since the Nazi war effort had largely stripped the civil population of able-bodied men for service in the military, the victims of the atrocity were primarily old men, women, and children. Upon the Soviet withdrawal from the area, German authorities sent in film crews to document what had happened, since many Soviet soldiers had lost family and friends during the German invasion and partial occupation of the USSR, many felt a desire for vengeance. Murders of Axis prisoners of war and German civilians are known from cases at Soviet military tribunals, Lev Kopelev, who took part in the invasion of East Prussia, sharply criticized atrocities against the German civilian population. For this he was arrested in 1945 and sentenced to a term in the Gulag for bourgeois humanism. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also served in East Prussia in 1945 and was arrested for criticizing Joseph Stalin, Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to an eight-year term in a labor camp. The evacuation plans for parts of East Prussia were ready in the half of 1944. They consisted of general plans and specific instructions for many towns. The plans encompassed not only civilians, but also industry and livestock, initially, Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia, forbade evacuation of civilians, and ordered that civilians trying to flee the region without permission should be instantly shot. Any kind of made by civilians were treated as defeatism. Koch and many other Nazi functionaries were among the first to flee during the Soviet advance, between 12 January and mid-February 1945, almost 8.5 million Germans fled the Eastern provinces of the Reich. Mingled with retreating Wehrmacht units, and without any camouflage or shelter, many wagons broke through the bomb-riddled ice covering the brackish water. Also horses and caretakers from the Trakehner stud farms were evacuated with the wagon trains, the evacuation was severely hampered by Wehrmacht units, which clogged roads and bridges. The remaining men aged 16 –60 were immediately incorporated into the Volkssturm, however, some Volkssturm members, without basic military knowledge and training, escaped into the woods, hoping to simply survive

3.
Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia
–
The expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II was part of a series of evacuations and expulsions of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe during and after World War II. During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Czech resistance groups demanded the deportation of Germans from Czechoslovakia, the decision to deport the Germans was adopted by the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile which, beginning in 1943, sought the support of the Allies for this proposal. The final agreement for the expulsion of the German population however was not reached until 2 August 1945 at the end of the Potsdam Conference, in the months following the end of the war wild expulsions happened from May until August 1945. Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš on October 28,1945 called for the solution of the German question which would have to be solved by deportation of the ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia. The expulsions were executed by order of local authorities, mostly by groups of armed volunteers, However, in some cases it was initiated or pursued with the assistance of the regular army. Several thousand died violently during the expulsion and more died from hunger, the expulsion according to the Potsdam Conference proceeded from 25 January 1946 until October of that year. An estimated 1.6 million ethnic Germans were deported to the American zone of what would become West Germany, an estimated 800,000 were deported to the Soviet zone. The expulsions ended in 1948, but not all Germans were expelled, the West German government in 1958 estimated the death toll be about 270,000, a figure that has been cited in historical literature since then. The Commission statement also said that German records show 18,889 confirmed deaths including 3,411 suicides, Czech records indicated 22,247 deaths including 6,667 unexplained cases or suicides. The pre-war policy of minority protection was now seen as useless and counterproductive, because it led to the destruction of the democratic régime, therefore, the Czechoslovak leaders made a decision to change the multiethnic character of the state to a state of 2 or 3 ethnicities. This goal was to be reached by the expulsion of the part of minority members. On June 22,1942, after plans for the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans had become known, the Czechs and their government did not want Czechoslovakia to be burdened in future with a sizable German minority. These demands were adopted by the Government-in-Exile which, beginning in 1943 and we made it clear that we did not like the idea of mass transfers anyway. As, however, we could not prevent them, we wished to ensure that they were carried out in as orderly, developing a clear picture of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia is difficult because of the chaotic conditions that existed at the end of the war. There was no central government and record-keeping was non-existent. Many of the events occurred during the period were spontaneous. Among these spontaneous events was the removal and detention of the Sudeten Germans which was triggered by the strong anti-German sentiment at the grass-roots level and organized by local officials. According to the Schieder commission, records of food rationing coupons show approximately 3,070,899 inhabitants of occupied Sudetenland in January 1945, which included Czechs or other non-Germans

4.
Operation Black Tulip
–
Operation Black Tulip was a plan proposed in 1945, just after the end of World War II, by Dutch minister of Justice Kolfschoten to forcibly deport all Germans from the Netherlands. The operation lasted from 1946 to 1948 and in the end 3,691 Germans were deported, after World War II, the Netherlands was a country in ruins and the major pre-war trade links with Germany and Indonesia were severed. Because of the importance of trade with Germany, the demand for compensation was dropped. But there was still a lot of resentment, many people were arrested, most notably collaborators. The 25,000 Germans living in the Netherlands were branded as hostile subjects and they were to be evicted in three groups in reverse order of entry. The first who had to leave were those who came after the start of the first world war, then those who came after 1932 and they were allowed to take one hundred Guilders. The rest of their possessions went to the state and they were taken to internment camps near the German border, the biggest of which was Mariënbosch near Nijmegen. The allied forces that occupied Western Germany didnt like this operation because other countries might follow suit, the British troops in Germany reacted by evicting 100,000 Dutch citizens in Germany to the Netherlands. The operation ended in 1948, and on 26 July 1951, the state of war with Germany officially ended, after the plan was ended, little attention was devoted to it by historians and the media. Bakker-Schut Plan Flight and expulsion of Germans Bogaarts, Melchior D. Weg met de moffen, Parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland na 1945, D, Nijmegen, ISBN 90-71478-37-8

5.
Wolf children
–
Wolf children was the name given to a group of orphaned German children at the end of World War II in East Prussia. Between the end of 1944 and January 1945, civilians were forbidden by the Nazis to evacuate, the Nazis viewed evacuation as a sign of capitulation. As the Red Army got closer, many prepared to evacuate anyway, until the last minute, the Nationalist Socialist Governor Erich Koch gave orders that fleeing was illegal and punishable. At the last moment flight was allowed, the invasion prompted millions of men, women, and children to flee, however, many adults were killed, leaving many orphaned children. The children fled into the surrounding forest and were forced to fend for themselves, many German children who were not fortunate enough to escape were killed by Allied bombs. Thousands more were abandoned, orphaned, raped or kidnapped, older children often tried to keep their siblings together, and survival—searching for food and shelter became their number-one priority. Many went on food-scrounging trips into neighboring Lithuania and were adopted by the rural Lithuanian farmers, most of these children made these trips back and forth many times to get food for their sick mothers or siblings. Those who assisted the German children to survive had to hide their efforts from the Soviet authorities in Lithuania, therefore, many German childrens names were changed, and only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 could they reveal their true identities. After Soviet occupation and orphaned by hunger and disease, these children had to care for themselves. Surviving despite starvation meant they were condemned to live through begging, drudging, stealing, Lithuanian farmers, who sold their products in the townships of East Prussia in 1946, looked for children and young people to support them in their daily work. Thus many children streamed regularly to the eastern Baltic region to receive food in exchange for products or their labor, others were condemned to roam around begging. The Lithuanians helped the children of East Prussia commuting to Lithuania to find nourishment and they adopted some of the younger ones, even though Lithuanians risked severe treatment by the Soviet authorities should it be detected that they sheltered wolf children. Some of the children remained on the Lithuanian farms permanently, according to rough estimates,45,000 German children and young people stayed in Lithuania in 1948. Most of them became orphans by war and flight in the stage of child or baby and they had to care for themselves and find out how to survive. Many reached Lithuania, where worked at farms to gain their living. Most had no chance for school education, a larger part never got lessons to write or read. In many cases, the children got new Lithuanian first - and family names, There was no choice, as it was forbidden for them to opt as Germans. Later on, those who could be identified as German orphans in former East Prussia were sent to stay in Russian homes for children, Orphans from former East Prussia were also adopted by Russian families

6.
Silesia
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Silesia is a region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is about 40,000 km2, and its population about 8,000,000, Silesia is located along the Oder River. It consists of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia, the region is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesias largest city and historical capital is Wrocław, the biggest metropolitan area is the Upper Silesian metropolitan area, the centre of which is Katowice. Parts of the Czech city of Ostrava fall within the borders of Silesia, Silesias borders and national affiliation have changed over time, both when it was a hereditary possession of noble houses and after the rise of modern nation-states. The first known states to hold there were probably those of Greater Moravia at the end of the 9th century. In the 10th century, Silesia was incorporated into the early Polish state, in the 14th century, it became a constituent part of the Bohemian Crown Lands under the Holy Roman Empire, which passed to the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in 1526. Most of Silesia was conquered by Prussia in 1742, later becoming part of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the varied history with changing aristocratic possessions resulted in an abundance of castles in Silesia, especially in the Jelenia Góra valley. The remaining former Austrian parts of Silesia were partitioned to Czechoslovakia, in 1945, after World War II, the bulk of Silesia was transferred to Polish jurisdiction by the Potsdam Agreement of the victorious Allied Powers and became part of Poland. The small Lusatian strip west of the Oder-Neisse line, which had belonged to Silesia since 1815 and its centres are Görlitz and Bautzen. Most inhabitants of Silesia today speak the languages of their respective countries. The population of Upper Silesia is native, while Lower Silesia was settled by a German-speaking population before 1945, an ongoing debate exists whether Silesian speech should be considered a dialect of Polish or a separate language. Also, a Lower Silesian German dialect is used, although today it is almost extinct and it is used by expellees within Germany, as well as Germans who were left behind. The names all relate to the name of a river and mountain in mid-southern Silesia, the mountain served as a cultic place. Ślęża is listed as one of the numerous Pre-Indo-European topographic names in the region, according to some Polish Slavists, the name Ślęża or Ślęż is directly related to the Old Slavic words ślęg or śląg, which means dampness, moisture, or humidity. They disagree with the hypothesis of an origin for the name Śląsk from the name of the Silings tribe, in the fourth century BC, Celts entered Silesia, settling around Mount Ślęża near modern Wrocław, Oława, and Strzelin. Germanic Lugii tribes were first recorded within Silesia in the 1st century, Slavic peoples arrived in the region around the 7th century, and by the early ninth century, their settlements had stabilized. Local Slavs started to erect boundary structures like the Silesian Przesieka, the eastern border of Silesian settlement was situated to the west of the Bytom, and east from Racibórz and Cieszyn

7.
Allied-occupied Germany
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The four powers divided Germany into four occupation zones for administrative purposes, into what is collectively known now as Allied-occupied Germany. This division was ratified at the Potsdam Conference, in Autumn 1944 the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union had agreed on the zones by the London Protocol. The Final German Peace Treaty would result in the westward of Polands borders back to approximately as they were before 1722. In the closing weeks of fighting in Europe, United States forces had pushed beyond the boundaries for the future zones of occupation. The so-called line of contact between Soviet and American forces at the end of hostilities, mostly lying eastward of the July 1945-established inner German border was temporary. After two months in which they had areas that had been assigned to the Soviet zone. All territories annexed by Germany before the war from Austria and Czechoslovakia were returned to these countries, the Memel Territory, annexed by Germany from Lithuania before the war, was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945 and transferred to the Lithuanian SSR. All territories annexed by Germany during the war from Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Poland, the American zone consisted of Bavaria and Hesse in Southern Germany, and the northern portions of the present-day German state of Baden-Württemberg. The ports of Bremen and Bremerhaven were also placed under American control because of the American request to have certain toeholds in Northern Germany, the headquarters of the American military government was the former IG Farben Building in Frankfurt am Main. Beginning in May 1945, many of the American combat troops and airmen in, Army, the Army Air Forces, and the U. S. Navy upon their return home. The Canadian Army was tied down in surrounding the Netherlands until the Germans there surrendered on 5 May 1945 – just two days before the surrender of the Wehrmacht in Western Europe to U. S. Then in July 1945, the British Army withdrew from small slices of Germany that had previously agreed to be occupied by the Soviet Army. Within the British Zone of Occupation, the CCG/BE re-established the German state of Hamburg, also in 1947, the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen became an exclave of the American Zone of Occupation located within the British Zone. In 1946, the Norwegian Brigade Group in Germany had 4,000 soldiers in Hanover, despite its being one of the Allied Powers, the French Republic was at first not granted an occupation zone in Germany. This created a French zone of occupation in the westernmost part of Germany and it consisted of two barely contiguous areas of Germany along the French border that met at just a single point along the Rhine River. It included the Saargebiet, which was disentangled from it on 16 February 1946, by 18 December 1946 customs controls were established between the Saar area and allied occupied Germany. The French zone ceded further adjacent municipalities to the Saar, included in the French zone was the town of Büsingen am Hochrhein, a German exclave separated from the rest of the country by a narrow strip of neutral Swiss territory. The Swiss government agreed to limited numbers of French troops to pass through its territory in order to maintain law

8.
German Federal Archives
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The German Federal Archives or Bundesarchiv are the National Archives of Germany. They were established at the current location in Koblenz in 1952 and they are subordinated to the State Minister of Culture and the Media, and before 1998, to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The institutions 2009 budget amounted to 54.6 million Euro, on December 6,2008 the Archives donated 100,000 photos to the public, by making them accessible via Wikimedia Commons. This national archive documented German government dating from the founding of the North German Confederation in 1867 and it also included material from the older German Confederation and the Imperial Chamber Court. The oldest documents in this collection dated back to the year 1411, photographs and film of a younger vintage were also contained in the original archive, much of which was contributed by non-governmental sources. Despite efforts to save the most valuable parts of the collection, in 1946, the German Central Archive was founded in Potsdam, then in the Soviet occupation zone and later in East Germany. This archive, renamed the Central State Archive in 1973, was viewed as the successor to the original archive, in part because it was located in the same city. By the end of the 1950s, records that had originally been seized by the government of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II had been returned to the archive. In West Germany, the Cabinet of Germany decided to create a new Federal Archive in Koblenz in 1950, the United States and the United Kingdom, like the Soviet Union, also seized records from Germany following World War II in their respective zones of occupation. In 1955, a Military Archives Division was established as part of the Federal Archives as a place into which these records were returned, the reunification of Germany in 1990 also led to the unification of West Germanys Federal Archive with East Germanys Central State Archive. In the course of development, the formerly separate National Film Archive. With the unification of the two German archives in 1990, the traditions of the East Germany state authorities were absorbed into the Federal Archives, however, legal problems were encountered during this process in securing the archives and libraries of East Germanys political parties and mass organizations. Even though East Germanys political structure meant that these institutions had very close ties to the government, further problems arose as these records were separated from other East German documents, resulting in the Federal Archives presenting an incomplete picture of East Germanys history. In 1991, an initiative was implemented that placed the records in question into the possession of the Federal Archives. As a result of initiative, a bill amending the Federal Archives Act of 1988 that established the department foundation provided for the Federal Archives came into force on 13 March 1992. In addition to records, the Archives also contain material from political parties, associations. Besides the text documents, the Archives also keeps photographs, films, maps, posters, mommsen Hans Booms Friedrich Kahlenberg Hartmut Weber Michael Hollmann Media related to Bundesarchiv at Wikimedia Commons Federal Archives Website

9.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan

10.
Former eastern territories of Germany
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The former eastern territories of Germany are those provinces or regions east of the current eastern border of Germany which were lost by Germany after World War I and then World War II. All territories lost in both World Wars account for 33% of the former German Empire, while land ceded by Germany after World War II constituted roughly 25% of its pre-war Weimar territory. The post-war border between Germany and Poland along the Oder–Neisse line was recognized by East Germany in 1950 by the Treaty of Zgorzelec. In 1952, recognition of the Oder–Neisse line as a permanent boundary was one of Stalins conditions for the Soviet Union to agree to a reunification of Germany, the offer was rejected by West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. In 1970, West Germany recognised the line as a de facto boundary in the Treaty of Warsaw, with this repeal the post-1990 boundaries of Germany are closed to further expansion. In German there is only one term, Ostdeutschland, meaning East Germany or Eastern Germany. The rather ambiguous German term never gained prevailing use for the GDR as did the English term, since Ostdeutschland has been used to denote the post-war and the respective five states of the reunited Germany. At the time of the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, prussian territory east of the Oder-Neisse line included West Prussia and Posen, also Silesia, East Brandenburg, and Pomerania. Later, these territories would come to be called in Germany Ostgebiete des deutschen Reiches, the territories ceded to Poland in 1919 were those with an apparent Polish majority, such as the Province of Posen, the east-southern part of Upper Silesia and the Polish Corridor. The city of Danzig with the delta of the Vistula river at the Baltic Sea, was made the Free City of Danzig under the League of Nations, however, as distinct from other lost Czechoslovakian domains, it was not attached to Sudetengau but to Prussia. By late 1938, Lithuania had lost control over the situation in the Memel Territory, between the two world wars, many in Germany claimed that the territory ceded to Poland in 1919–1922 should be returned to Germany. This claim was one of the justifications for the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Third Reich annexed the former German lands, comprising the Polish Corridor, West Prussia, the Province of Posen, and parts of eastern Upper Silesia. The council of the Free City of Danzig voted to become a part of Germany again, although Poles and Jews were deprived of their voting rights, in addition to taking territories lost in 1919, Germany also took additional land that had never been German. These territories had an area of 94,000 km2 and a population of 10,000,000 people, the remainder of Polish territory was annexed by the Soviet Union or made into the German-controlled General Government occupation zone. The open question was whether the border should follow the Eastern or Lusatian Neisse rivers, and whether Stettin, originally, Germany was to retain Stettin while the Poles were to annex East Prussia with Königsberg. Eventually, however, Stalin decided that he wanted Königsberg as a warm water port for the Soviet Navy. The wartime Polish government in exile had little to say in these decisions, at the Yalta Conference, it was agreed to split Germany into four occupation zones after the war, with a quadripartite occupation of Berlin as well, prior unification of Germany. The status of Poland was discussed, but was complicated by the fact that Poland was at this time under the control of the Red Army and this effectively excluded the Polish government-in-exile that had evacuated in 1939

11.
People's Republic of Poland
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The Polish Peoples Republic covers the history of Poland under Communist control between 1952 and 1990. The name was defined by the Constitution of 1952 which was based on the 1936 Soviet Constitution, between 1947 and 1952, the name of the Polish state was the Republic of Poland, in accordance with the temporary Constitution of 1947. The Soviet Union had much influence over internal and external affairs, and Red Army forces were stationed in Poland. In 1945, Soviet generals and advisors formed 80% of the cadre of the Polish Armed Forces. The Polish United Workers Party became the dominant political party, officially making the country a Communist state, at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Stalin was able to present his western allies, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, with a fait accompli in Poland. His armed forces were in occupation of the country, and his agents, the USSR was in the process of incorporating the lands in eastern Poland which it had occupied between 1939 and 1941. In compensation, the USSR awarded Poland German territories in Pomerania, Silesia and these awards were confirmed at the Tripartite Conference of Berlin, otherwise known as the Potsdam Conference in August 1945 after the end of the war in Europe. Stalin was determined that Polands new government would become his tool towards making Poland a Soviet puppet state controlled by the communists. He had severed relations with the Polish government-in-exile in London in 1943, the communists held a majority of key posts in this new government, and with Soviet support they soon gained almost total control of the country, rigging all elections. This important victory would be their last, however, as the communists, tightening their grip on power, many of their opponents decided to leave the country, and others were put on staged trials and sentenced to many years of imprisonment or execution. In June 1946 the Three Times Yes referendum was held on a number of issues—abolition of the Senate of Poland, land reform, the communist-controlled Interior Ministry issued results showing that all three questions passed overwhelmingly. Years later, however, evidence was uncovered showing that the referendum had been tainted by massive fraud, Gomułka then took advantage of a split in the Polish Socialist Party. One faction, which included Prime Minister Edward Osóbka-Morawski, wanted to join forces with the Peasant Party, another faction, led by Józef Cyrankiewicz, argued that the Socialists should support the Communists in carrying through a socialist program, while opposing the imposition of one-party rule. Pre-war political hostilities continued to influence events, and Mikołajczyk would not agree to form a front with the Socialists. The Communists played on these divisions by dismissing Osóbka-Morawski and making Cyrankiewicz Prime Minister, between the referendum and the January 1947 general elections, the opposition was subjected to persecution. Only the candidates of the pro-government Democratic Bloc were allowed to campaign completely unmolested, meanwhile, several opposition candidates were prevented from campaigning at all. Mikołajczyks Polish Peoples Party in particular suffered persecution, it had opposed the abolition of the Senate as a test of strength against the government, although it supported the other two questions, the Communist-dominated government branded the PSL traitors. This massive oppression was overseen by Gomułka and the provisional president, the official results of the election showed the Democratic Bloc with 80.1 percent of the vote

12.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states

13.
Second Polish Republic
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The Second Polish Republic, also known as the Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland, refers to the country of Poland between the First and Second World Wars. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland and it had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline either side of the city of Gdynia. Between March and August 1939, Poland also shared a border with the then-Hungarian governorate of Subcarpathia, the Second Republic was significantly different in territory to the current Polish state. It included substantially more territory in the east and less in the west, the Second Republics land area was 388,634 km2, making it, in October 1938, the sixth largest country in Europe. After the annexation of Zaolzie, this grew to 389,720 km2, according to the 1921 census, the number of inhabitants was 27.2 million. By 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, almost a third of population came from minority groups,13. 9% Ukrainians, 10% Jews,3. 1% Belarusians,2. 3% Germans and 3. 4% Czechs, Lithuanians and Russians. At the same time, a significant number of ethnic Poles lived outside the country borders, Poland maintained a slow but steady level of economic development. By 1939, the Republic had become one of Europes major powers, the victorious Allies of World War I confirmed the rebirth of Poland in the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919. It was one of the stories of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Poland solidified its independence in a series of wars fought by the newly formed Polish Army from 1918 to 1921. The extent of the half of the interwar territory of Poland was settled diplomatically in 1922. In the course of World War I, Germany gradually gained overall dominance on the Eastern Front as the Imperial Russian Army fell back, German and Austro-Hungarian armies seized the Russian-ruled part of what became Poland. In a failed attempt to resolve the Polish question as quickly as possible, Berlin set up a German puppet state on 5 November 1916, with a governing Provisional Council of State, the Council administered the country under German auspices, pending the election of a king. A month before Germany surrendered on 11 November 1918 and the war ended, the Regency Council had dissolved the Council of State, with the notable exception of the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, most Polish political parties supported this move. On 23 October the Regency Council appointed a new government under Józef Świeżyński, in 1918–1919, over 100 workers councils sprang up on Polish territories, on 5 November 1918, in Lublin, the first Soviet of Delegates was established. On 6 November socialists proclaimed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg at Tarnobrzeg in Austrian Galicia, the same day the Socialist, Ignacy Daszyński, set up a Provisional Peoples Government of the Republic of Poland in Lublin. On Sunday,10 November at 7 a. m, Józef Piłsudski, newly freed from 16 months in a German prison in Magdeburg, returned by train to Warsaw. Piłsudski, together with Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, was greeted at Warsaws railway station by Regent Zdzisław Lubomirski, next day, due to his popularity and support from most political parties, the Regency Council appointed Piłsudski as Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces

14.
Baltic States
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The Baltic states cooperate on a regional level in several intergovernmental organizations. While the native populations of Latvia and Lithuania are known as Baltic people, another Baltic identity, Baltic German, began to develop during the Middle Ages after the Livonian Crusade. After the collapse of Livonia, parts of Latvia and Estonia came under influence of the Commonwealth and this lasted until the 18th century, when the lands of all three modern countries were gradually absorbed into the Russian Empire. The Baltic states gained independence after World War I, but were occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, all three countries are members of the European Union, NATO and the Eurozone. They are classified as high-income economies by the World Bank and maintain high Human Development Index, Estonia and Latvia are also members of the OECD, while Lithuania is a prospective candidate. The term Baltic stems from the name of the Baltic Sea – a hydronym dating back to the 11th century, although there are several theories about its origin, most ultimately trace it to Indo-European root *bhel meaning white, fair. This meaning is retained in modern Baltic languages, where baltas, however the modern names of the region and the sea, that originate from this root, were not used in either of the two languages prior to the 19th century. In English Ost is East, and in fact, the Baltic Sea mostly lies to the east of Germany, Denmark, Norway, in the 13th century pagan Baltic and Finnic peoples in the region became a target of the Northern Crusades. In the aftermath of the Livonian crusade, a crusader state officially named Terra Mariana and it was divided into four autonomous bishoprics and lands of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. After the Brothers of the Sword suffered defeat at the Battle of Saule, Northern Estonia initially became a Danish dominion, but it was purchased by the Teutonic Order in the mid-14th century. The Lithuanians were also targeted by the crusaders, however they were able to resist and it allied with the Kingdom of Poland. After the Union of Krewo in 1385 created a union between the two countries, they became ever more closely integrated and finally merged into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. After victory in the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War, the Polish–Lithuanian union became a political power in the region. In 1558 Livonia was attacked by the Tsardom of Russia and the Livonian war broke out, the rulers of different regions within Livonia sought to ally with foreign powers, which resulted in Polish–Lithuanian, Swedish and Danish involvement. In the aftermath of conflicts of the 17th century, much of the Duchy of Livonia. These newly acquired Swedish territories, as well as Ingria and Kexholm, at the beginning of the 18th century the Swedish Empire was attacked by a coalition of several European powers in the Great Northern War. Among these powers was Russia, seeking to restore its access to the Baltic Sea, during the course of the war it conquered all of the Swedish provinces on the Eastern Baltic coast. This acquisition was legalized by the Treaty of Nystad in which the Baltic Dominions were ceded to Russia, under Russian rule these territories came to be known as Ostsee Governorates

15.
Nazis
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National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, as well as other far-right groups. Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism, identifying Germans as part of what Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race and it aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous society, unified on the basis of racial purity. The term National Socialism arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, the Nazi Partys precursor, the Pan-German nationalist and anti-Semitic German Workers Party, was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, Adolf Hitler assumed control of the organisation, following the Holocaust and German defeat in World War II, only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, still describe themselves as following National Socialism. The full name of Adolf Hitlers party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the shorthand Nazi was formed from the first two syllables of the German pronunciation of the word national. The term was in use before the rise of the NSDAP as a colloquial and derogatory word for a peasant, characterizing an awkward. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the first word of the name, Nationalsozialistische. The NSDAP briefly adopted the Nazi designation, attempting to reappropriate the term, the use of Nazi Germany, Nazi regime, and so on was popularised by German exiles abroad. From them, the spread into other languages and was eventually brought back to Germany after World War II. In English, Nazism is a name for the ideology the party advocated. The majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics, far-right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over other people and purge society of supposed inferior elements. Adolf Hitler and other proponents officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms, a major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I. The Nazis stated the alliance was purely tactical and there remained substantial differences with the DNVP, the Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party. After the elections in 1932, the alliance broke after the DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag, the Nazis denounced them as an insignificant heap of reactionaries. The DNVP responded by denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their violence. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was pressured to abdicate the throne and flee into exile amidst an attempted communist revolution in Germany, there were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical

16.
Generalplan Ost
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The Generalplan Ost, abbreviated GPO, was the Nazi German governments plan for the genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, and colonization of Central and Eastern Europe by Germans. It was to be undertaken in territories occupied by Germany during World War II, the plan entailed the enslavement, expulsion, and mass murder of most Slavic peoples in Europe along with planned destruction of their nations, whom the Aryan Nazis viewed as racially inferior. The programme operational guidelines were based on the policy of Lebensraum designed by Adolf Hitler, as such, it was intended to be a part of the New Order in Europe. The master plan was a work in progress, there are four known versions of it, developed as the time went on. After the invasion of Poland, the blueprint for Generalplan Ost was discussed by the RKFDV in mid-1940 during the Nazi–Soviet population transfers. The second known version of GPO was procured by the RSHA from Wetzel in April 1942, the third version was officially dated June 1942. The final settlement master plan for the East came in from the RKFDV on October 29,1942, however, after the German defeat at Stalingrad planning of the colonization in the East was suspended, and the programme was gradually abandoned. The body responsible for the drafting of General Plan East was the Reich Main Security Office of the SS under Heinrich Himmler, the actual document was revised several times between June 1941 and spring 1942 as the war in the east progressed successfully. According to testimony of SS-Standartenführer Dr. Hans Ehlich, the version of the plan was drafted in 1940. It had been preceded by the Ostforschung, a number of studies and research carried out over several years by various academic centres to provide the necessary facts. The preliminary versions were discussed by Heinrich Himmler and his most trusted colleagues even before the outbreak of war and this was mentioned by SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski during his evidence as a prosecution witness in the trial of officials of the Race and Settlement Main Office. Nearly all the documentation on Generalplan Ost was deliberately destroyed shortly before Germanys defeat in May 1945. Thus, no set of originals have ever been found after the war. Apart from Ehlichs testimony, there are documents which refer to this plan or are supplements to it. Although no copies of the full proposal have survived, most of the plans essential elements have been reconstructed from related memos, abstracts. Wetzels memorandum was an elaboration of the Generalplan Ost proposal. But it came to only in 1957. In subsequent years, his declaration from Berghof has been referred to as Hitlers Armenian quote, both plans entailed the policy of ethnic cleansing

17.
Aftermath of World War II
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Western Europe and Japan were rebuilt through the American Marshall Plan whereas Eastern Europe fell in the Soviet sphere of influence and rejected the plan. Europe was divided into a US-led Western Bloc and a Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, internationally, alliances with the two blocs gradually shifted, with some nations trying to stay out of the Cold War through the Non-Aligned Movement. As a consequence of the war, the Allies created the United Nations, members of the United Nations agreed to outlaw wars of aggression in an attempt to avoid a third world war. The devastated great powers of Western Europe formed the European Coal and Steel Community and this effort primarily began as an attempt to avoid another war between Germany and France by economic cooperation and integration, and a common market for important natural resources. Also related to this was Israel gaining independence from its previous status as part of Mandatory Palestine in the immediately following the war. Independence for the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa came more slowly, the aftermath of World War II also saw the rise of the Peoples Republic of China, as the Chinese Communists emerged victorious from the Chinese Civil War in 1949. At the end of the war, millions of people were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, the Soviet Union, too, had been heavily affected. In response, in 1947, U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall devised the European Recovery Program, under the plan, during 1948–1952 the United States government allocated US$13 billion for the reconstruction of Western Europe. By the end of the war, the economy of the United Kingdom was exhausted, more than a quarter of its national wealth had been spent. Until the introduction in 1941 of Lend-Lease aid from the US, lend-lease came just before its reserves were exhausted. Britain put 55% of its labor force into war production. In spring 1945, the Labour Party withdrew from the coalition government. Following a landslide victory, Labour held more than 60% of the seats in the House of Commons, britains war debt was described by some in the American administration as a millstone round the neck of the British economy. Although there were suggestions for a conference to tackle the issue. The abrupt withdrawal of American Lend Lease support to Britain on 2 September 1945 dealt a blow to the plans of the new government. It was only with the completion of the Anglo-American loan by the United States to Great Britain on 15 July 1946 that some measure of stability was restored. Although the loan was agreed on terms, its conditions included what proved to be damaging fiscal conditions for Sterling. From 1946-1948, the UK introduced bread rationing which it never did during the war, the Soviet Union suffered enormous losses in the war against Germany

18.
World War II evacuation and expulsion
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Mass evacuation, forced displacement, expulsion, and deportation of millions of people took place across most countries involved in World War II. A number of these phenomena were categorised as violations of human values. The refugee crisis created across formerly occupied territories in World War II provided the context for much of the new international refugee, the belligerents on both sides have engaged in ethnic cleansing of people perceived as being associated with the enemy. The Holocaust also involved deportations and expulsions of Jews aside from the subsequent genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany under the auspices of Aktion Reinhard,1939 to 1945, The Nazis planned to ethnically cleanse the whole Polish population according to a germanisation Master Plan called Generalplan Ost. Eventually in the course of Nazi occupation up to 1.6 to 2 million Poles were expelled,1939 to 1940, Expulsions of 680,000 Poles from German occupied Wielkopolska. From the city of Poznań Germans expelled to General Government 70,000 Poles,1939 to 1940, Expulsions of 121,765 Poles from German occupied Pomerania. On Polish places 130,000 Volksdeutsche was settled including 57,000 Germans from East Europe countries, Soviet Union, Bessarabia, Romania, Deportation was a part of German Lebensraum policy ordered by German organisations like Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and Resettlement departament of RKFDV. Some of the territories were evacuated during the war or before it, most of the territory was evacuated after the Soviet Union gained it as a part of the Moscow peace treaty. In total,410,000 people were transferred,1940 to 1941, The Soviets deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens, most in four mass waves. The accepted figure was over 1.5 million, the most conservative figures use recently found NKVD documents showing 309,000 to 381,220. The original figures were, February 1940 over 220,000, April around 315,000, German and Volksdeutsche settlers move in. This was one of the forced migrations associated with the Holocaust. 1940 to 1941, The deportation of Volga Germans by Soviet Union to Kazakhstan, Altai Krai, Siberia,1941, The deportation of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians by Soviet Union. Around 110,000 people from 297 villages were expelled, around 30,000 victims were children who, if racially clean were planned for germanisation in German families in the Third Reich. Most of the people expelled were sent as slave labour in Germany or to concentration camps,1941 to 1944, in Kosovo & Metohija, some 10,000 Serbs lost their lives, and about 80,000 to 100,000 or more were ethnically cleansed. 1941 to 1945, More than 250,000 Serbs were expelled from Croatia and Bosnia by the extreme nationalist Ustaše regime during the Serbian Genocide,1941 to 1949, During World War II, Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians were interned in camps. 1942, Deportation of the Ingrian Finns from Soviet controlled territory of the Leningrad Blockade,1943 to 1944, The Deportation of Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, and Meskhetian Turks by Soviet Union to Central Asia and Siberia. 1943 to 1944, The ethnic cleansing and Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by the nationalist UPA with the bulk of victims reported in summer,1944, The displacement of the majority ethnic Estonian population from the Estonian city of Narva by Soviet occupation authorities

19.
Allied-occupied Austria
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The Allied occupation of Austria lasted from 1945 to 1955. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Austria, like Germany, was divided into four zones and jointly occupied by the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom. Vienna, like Berlin, was subdivided but the central district was administered jointly by the Allied Control Council. After Austrian promises of perpetual neutrality, Austria was accorded full independence on 12 May 1955, at the 1943 Moscow Conference, the allies had jointly decided that the German annexation of Austria in 1938 would be considered null and void. As well, all administrative and legal measures since 1938 would be ignored, on 29 March 1945 the Soviet commander Fyodor Tolbukhins troops crossed the former Austrian border at Klostermarienberg in Burgenland. On 3 April, at the beginning of the Vienna Offensive, Joseph Stalin had already established a would-be future Austrian cabinet from the countrys communists in exile, but Tolbukhins telegram changed Stalins mind in favor of Renner. On 20 April 1945, the Soviets, without asking their Western allies, seven days later Renners cabinet took office, declared the independence of Austria from Nazi Germany and called for the creation of a democratic state along the lines of the First Austrian Republic. Renner and his ministers were guarded and watched by NKVD bodyguards, one-third of State Chancellor Renners cabinet, including crucial seats of the Secretary of State of the Interior and the Secretary of State for Education, was staffed by Austrian Communists. The Western allies suspected the usual Soviet pattern of setting up puppet states, the British were particularly hostile, even Harry Truman, who believed that Renner was a trustworthy politician rather than a token front for the Kremlin, denied him recognition. But Renner had secured inter-party control by designating two Under-Secretaries of State in each of the ministries, appointed by the two parties not placing the Secretary of State. As soon as Hitlers armies were pushed back into Germany, the Red Army, by 23 May they reported arrests of 268 former Red Army men,1,208 Wehrmacht men and 1,655 civilians. In the following weeks the British surrendered over 40,000 Cossacks who had fled to Western Austria to the Soviet authorities, in July and August, the Soviets brought in four regiments of NKVD troops to mop up Vienna and seal the Czechoslovak border. The Red Army lost 17,000 lives in the Battle of Vienna, but the reputation of the Soviet soldiers was immediately ruined by the vast amount of sexual violence against women, which occurred in the first days and weeks after the Soviet victory. Repressions against civilians harmed Red Army reputation to such an extent that on 28 September 1945 Moscow issued an order forbidding violent interrogations. Red Army morale fell as soldiers prepared to be sent home, throughout 1945 and 1946, all levels of Soviet command tried, in vain, to contain desertion and plunder by rank and file. According to Austrian police records for 1946, men in Soviet uniform, usually drunk, at the same time, the Soviet governors resisted the expansion and arming of the Austrian police force. The American 11th Armored division crossed the Austrian border on April 26, French troops on 29 April, until the end of July 1945 none of the Western allies had first-hand intelligence from Eastern Austria. On 9 July 1945 the Allies agreed on the borders of their occupation zones, the French and American zones bordered those countries zones in Germany, and the Soviet zone bordered future Warsaw Pact states

20.
Cold War
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The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. The term cold is used there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides. The Cold War split the temporary alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union. The USSR was a Marxist–Leninist state ruled by its Communist Party and secret police, the Party controlled the press, the military, the economy and all organizations. In opposition stood the West, dominantly democratic and capitalist with a free press, a small neutral bloc arose with the Non-Aligned Movement, it sought good relations with both sides. The two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat, but they were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war. The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the USSR and USA competed for influence in Latin America, and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was stopped by the Soviets, the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. The United States remained as the only superpower. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare

21.
Deutsches Historisches Museum
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It is often viewed as one of the most important museums in Berlin and is one of the most frequented. The museum is located in the Zeughaus on the avenue Unter den Linden as well as in the adjacent Exhibition Hall designed by I. M. Pei, the German Historical Museum is under the legal form of a foundation registered by the Federal Republic of Germany. Its highest-ranking body is the Board of Trustees with representatives of the Federal Government, the German Bundestag and the governments of the German Länder, or states. The museum was founded on 28 October 1987, on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin, it was inaugurated in the Reichstag building in former West Berlin. A commission consisting of 16 leading historians, art historians and museum directors worked out a concept for the museum in 1985/86, the final version became the basis for the founding of the DHM. The core of the Museums brief was to present German history in an international context, originally the Museum was to be located near the Reichstag Building at the Spreebogen, the government complex at the bend of the River Spree. The architecture competition for the project was won by the Italian architect Aldo Rossi in 1988, and thus the Zeughaus of 1695 – the oldest building on Unter den Linden – became the seat of the German Historical Museum. The first exhibitions were shown in the Zeughaus in September 1991, the DHM began expanding its collections shortly after its founding. Opening in December 1994, the former Permanent Exhibition, then entitled German History in Images and Testimonials, the façade of the Zeughaus was restored between 1994 and 1998 on the basis of historical documents. The building was closed from 1998 until 2003 while extensive restoration measures were carried out by the office of Winfried Brenne. The new building by I. M. Pei with an area of 2,700 m2 on four floors. The Permanent Exhibition German History in Images and Artefacts was inaugurated in the Zeughaus by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel on 2 June 2006, as of 30 December 2008 the DHM assumed the legal form of a Public Law Foundation of the Federal Government. Founded in 2009 to establish a centre for the remembrance and documentation of flight and expulsion, the four floors of the I. M. Pei Exhibition Hall are devoted to the Museums temporary exhibitions. The Zeughauskino, a theatre seating 165 guests, is an integral part of the German Historical Museum and is located in the Zeughaus. Its main aim is to bring together historical and film-historical questions in a programme that is marked by film series to accompany exhibitions as well as thematic retrospectives. In 2012, following a decision, the heirs of Hans Sachs were granted possession of his collection which had been expropriated from Dr. Sachs by the Nazis in 1938. The German Historical Museum has the most extensive object database of all museums in Germany that can be consulted on the Internet, the collections of the Museum are recorded and administered in the database. It currently comprises around 500,000 objects and provides digital photos of some 70 percent of these objects, reproduction rights for commercial purposes are managed by the DHM picture archive, which charges industry-standard usage fees

22.
Cabinet of Germany
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The Cabinet of Germany is the chief executive body of the Federal Republic of Germany. It consists of the Chancellor and the cabinet ministers, the Chancellor is elected by the federal parliament after being proposed by the President. Following the election, the Chancellor is appointed by the President, the ministers are appointed by the President upon proposal of the Chancellor. Eventually, before taking office, the Chancellor and ministers swear an oath in front of the parliament, the Chancellor is responsible for guiding the cabinet and deciding its political direction. According to the principle of departmentalization, the ministers are free to carry out their duties independently within the boundaries set by the Chancellors political directives. The Chancellor also decides the scope of each ministers duties, if two ministers disagree on a particular point, the cabinet resolves the conflict by a majority vote. The Chancellor is in charge of the administrative affairs, which are usually delegated to the head of the Chancellery. Details are laid down in the rules for internal procedures. These state, for example, that the cabinet is quorate only if at least half of the ministers including the chair are present, the cabinet regularly convenes Wednesday mornings in the Chancellery. According to established practice, decisions on important armaments exports are made by the Federal Security Council, pursuant to its rules of procedure, its sessions are confidential. As a general rule, the Federal Government, if asked, is required to inform the Bundestag that the Federal Security Council has approved a given armaments export transaction or not

23.
Red Army
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The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War

24.
Wehrmacht
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The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1946. It consisted of the Heer, the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler’s most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern armed forces fully capable of offensive use. In December 1941, Hitler designated himself as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany’s politico-military power. In the early part of World War II, Hitlers generals employed the Wehrmacht through innovative combined arms tactics to devastating effect in what was called a Blitzkrieg, the Wehrmachts new military structure, unique combat techniques, newly developed weapons, and unprecedented speed and brutality crushed their opponents. Closely cooperating with the SS, the German armed forces committed war crimes and atrocities. By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, only a few of the Wehrmacht’s upper leadership were tried for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions. The German term Wehrmacht generically describes any nations armed forces, for example, the Frankfurt Constitution of 1848 designated all German military forces as the German Wehrmacht, consisting of the Seemacht and the Landmacht. In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that, from 1919, Germanys national defense force was known as the Reichswehr, a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918, in March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420, 000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, the army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, submarines, tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air-force was dissolved. A new post-war military, the Reichswehr, was established on 23 March 1921, General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty. The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt, though Seeckt retired in 1926, the army that went to war in 1939 was largely his creation. Germany was forbidden to have an air-force by the Versailles treaty, nonetheless and these officers saw the role of an air-force as winning air-superiority, tactical and strategic bombing and providing ground support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations. The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939. By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles Treaty, a secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the treaty of Rapallo. Major-General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms, Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany

25.
Forced labor of Germans after World War II
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In the years following World War II, large numbers of German civilians and captured soldiers were forced into labour by the Allied forces. The topic of using Germans as forced labour for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin demanded 4,000,000 German workers. Forced labour was also included in the protocol of the Yalta conference in January 1945. The largest group of forced laborers in the Soviet Union consisted of several million German prisoners of war, most German POW survivors of the forced labor camps in the Soviet Union were released in 1953. The last major repatriation of Germans from the Soviet Union occurred in 1956, estimates of German POW casualties range from 600,000 to 1,000,000. The capture and transfer of civilian ethnic Germans to the Soviet Union began as soon as countries with a German minority began to be overrun in 1944, large numbers of civilians were taken from countries such as Romania, Yugoslavia, and from the eastern parts of Germany itself. For example, after Christmas 1944 between 27,000 and 30,000 ethnic Germans were sent to the USSR from Yugoslavia, women made up 90% of the group. Most were sent to camps in the Donbass where 16% of them died. Many ethnic Germans living within the Polish pre-war borders, prior to their expulsion, were used for years as forced labor in labor camps such as run by Salomon Morel. Among these camps were Central Labour Camp Jaworzno, Central Labour Camp Potulice, Łambinowice, Zgoda labour camp, the law authorising forced labour, Article 20 of the law on the exclusion of the enemy elements from society, also removed rights to Polish citizenship and all property owned. Roughly 200,000 ethnic Germans died in the Soviet run concentration camps in Poland, the salaries were insufficient for survival, usually 25 or 50 percent of Polish salaries. The German-speaking population of the Sudetenland was, in the case as Poland. The expulsion was not indiscriminate, however, since as late as 1947, Germans were forced to wear a white armband with the letter N, for Němec signifying German in Czech to identify them. Czech Deputy Premier Petr Mareš has in the past, in vain, many Germans in what would become East Germany were forced by the Communist authorities to work in German uranium mines producing the majority of the raw material of the Soviet atomic bomb project. Beginning in the summer of 1946 the Soviets began explorations in the Erzgebirge, an initial workforce of four to five thousand was established, with another 20,000 called for by the end of the year. By 1948 workers were pulled away from factories and criminals from jails to staff the mines, housing lagged behind the burgeoning workers, worsening already difficult conditions. The mines were considered worse than a colony, but were controlled directly by Moscow. Workers who began as volunteers were turned into forced labourers, Workers who attempted to escape, whether conscripts or volunteers, were hunted down and returned to the mines

26.
Central and Eastern Europe
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It is in use after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989–90. In scholarly literature the abbreviations CEE or CEEC are often used for this concept, the transition countries in Europe are thus classified today into two political-economic entities, CEE and CIS. According to the World Bank, the transition is over for the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 and it can be also understood as all countries of the Eastern Bloc. The definition of this varies, depending on the source. Central Europe Central and Eastern European Online Library East-Central Europe Eastern Europe Regions of Europe Baltic states Visegrád Group

27.
East-Central Europe
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East-Central Europe is the region between German-speaking Europe and Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Those lands are described as situated “between two”, between two worlds, between two stages, between two futures, in the geopolitical sense, East-Central Europe can be considered alongside Western and Eastern Europe, as one of the “Three Europes”. The concept differs from that of Central and Eastern Europe in that it is based on criteria whereby the states of Central, paul Robert Magocsi described this region in this work Historical Atlas of East Central Europe. He distinguished 3 main zones, The northern zone, located between the Baltic Sea and the alignment Ore Mountains-Sudetes-northern Carpathians-Prut river and the Dnieper in the east, the Alpine-Carpathian zone, located on the south of the northern zone, bordered in the south by the rivers Kupa-Sava-Danube. This area comprises the Pannonian Basin, and roughly coincides with the former Habsburg Empire before the mid nineteenth century and the Danubian Principalities. The countries located by the author in this zone are, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, northeast Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Balkan zone, located on the south of the Alpine-Carpathian zone and matching with the Balkan peninsula. The countries located by the author in this zone are, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, most of Central Serbia, and European Turkey. United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names was set up to consider the problems of domestic standardization of geographical names. The Group is composed of experts from various linguistic/geographical divisions that have established at the UN Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names. Baltic Division, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the Russian Federation, Eastern Europe, Northern and Central Asia Division, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Romano-Hellenic Division, Andorra, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Greece, Holy See, Italy, Luxembourg, Moldova, Monaco, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland and European Turkey. The institutes were established successively after 1990, with a secretariat in Lublin, the first president of the Committee was Jerzy Kłoczowski, long-time member of the UNESCO Executive Council and president of the Institute of East-Central Europe in Lublin. The Committees 10 meetings were devoted to East-Central Europe, the Federation maintains official relations with UNESCO. East Central European Center at Columbia University was established to promote the study of the countries lying between Germany and Russia and between the Baltic and Aegean seas, CEEM defines Median Europe as an area situated between Germany and Russia, from the Baltic region to the Balkans. e. Kremlin, nowadays streamlining process imposed by the West, East-Central Europe is sometimes defined as eastern part of Central Europe and is limited to member states of Visegrád Group - Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. This definition is close to the German concept of de, Ostmitteleuropa, between East and West, Lublin 2004, ISBN 83-85854-81-9 O. Halecki, Borderlands of Western Civilization, A History of East Central Europe, Fordham University I. Popa, Frontiere, regiuni transfrontalieresşi dezvoltare regionala in Europa Mediana, universitatii de Vest, Timisoara,2006 G. Zrinscak, L Europe médiane, des pays Baltes aux Balkans, La Documentation française 1999 P. Verluise, Géopolitique de lEurope. LUnion européenne élargie a-t-elle les moyens de la puissance

28.
Nationalism
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Nationalism is a complex, multidimensional concept involving a shared communal identification with ones nation. It is contrasted by Anti-nationalism as a political ideology oriented towards gaining and maintaining self-governance, or full sovereignty, Nationalism therefore holds that a nation should govern itself, free from unwanted outside interference, and is linked to the concept of self-determination. Nationalism therefore seeks to preserve the nations culture and it often also involves a sense of pride in the nations achievements, and is closely linked to the concept of patriotism. In these terms, nationalism can be considered positive or negative, from a political or sociological outlook, there are three main paradigms for understanding the origins and basis of nationalism. The first, known as Primordialism or Perennialism, sees nationalism as a natural phenomenon and it holds that although the concept nationhood may be recent, nations have always existed. The third, and most dominant paradigm is Modernism, which sees nationalism as a recent phenomenon that needs the structural conditions of society in order to exist. There are various definitions for what constitutes a nation, however and this anomie results in a society or societies reinterpreting identity, retaining elements that are deemed acceptable and removing elements deemed unacceptable, in order to create a unified community. Nationalism means devotion for the nation and it is a sentiment that binds the people together. National symbols and flags, national anthems, national languages, national myths, Nationalism is a newer word, in English the term dates from 1844, although the concept is older. It became important in the 19th century, the term increasingly became negative in its connotations after 1914. Glenda Sluga notes that The twentieth century, a time of disillusionment with nationalism, was also the great age of globalism. Nationalism is the term used to characterize the modern sense of national political autonomy. For example, German nationalism emerged as a reaction against Napoleonic control of Germany as the Confederation of the Rhine around 1805–14, linda Colley in Britons, Forging the Nation 1707–1837 explores how the role of nationalism emerged about 1700 and developed in Britain reaching full form in the 1830s. The early emergence of a popular patriotic nationalism took place in the mid-18th century, National symbols, anthems, myths, flags and narratives were assiduously constructed by nationalists and widely adopted. The Union Jack was adopted in 1801 as the national one, Thomas Arne composed the patriotic song Rule, Britannia. in 1740, and the cartoonist John Arbuthnot invented the character of John Bull as the personification of the English national spirit in 1712. The political convulsions of the late 18th century associated with the American, the Prussian scholar Johann Gottfried Herder originated the term in 1772 in his Essay on the Origins of Language. Stressing the role of a common language, the political development of nationalism and the push for popular sovereignty culminated with the ethnic/national revolutions of Europe. During the 19th century nationalism became one of the most significant political and social forces in history, napoleons conquests of the German and Italian states around 1800–06 played a major role in stimulating nationalism and the demands for national unity

29.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. After at first attempting to control, causing massive uprisings. This left a republic to manage a devastated and unsatisfied populace, the German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris. German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism and he envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany. The war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, the new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871. During the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same

30.
Prussian Settlement Commission
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The Prussian Settlement Commission was a Prussian government commission that operated between 1886 and 1924, but actively only until 1918. The Commission was motivated by anti-Polish sentiment and racism, the Commission was one of Prussias prime instruments in the official policy of Germanization of the historically Polish lands of West Prussia and the dissolved Grand Duchy of Posen. The Commission ultimately purchased 613 estates from German owners and 214 from Poles, by the end of its existence, a total of 21,886 German families out of a planned 40,000 had been settled. Some of the German colonists still remaining in Poland in 1939 were active in a Nazi campaign of genocide against Poles during World War II, english translations include German Colonization Commission for Poznań, Prussian Colonization CommissionThe Royal Commission of Colonization for West Prussia and Posnania). The majority of Polish sources translate the title as Colonization Commission rather than Settlement Commission, the issue of translation is also connected to the fact that in 1904 the legal difference between settlement and colony was abolished in Prussia. The Kingdom of Prussia during the partitions of Poland acquired West Prussia, the Polish language was abolished as an official language and German introduced. Frederick the Great hoped to replace Poles with Germans, most of administration was made German as well. Poles were portrayed as backward Slavs by Prussian officials who spread German language, the lands of Polish nobility were confiscated and given to German nobles. The Prussian hold on Polish areas was somewhat weakened after 1807 where parts of its partition were restored to Duchy of Warsaw. In 1815 the Prussian king made several guarantees in his speech to Poles in the newly formed Grand Duchy of Posen in regards to rights of Polish language, however, in practice the right to use Polish in courts and institutions was respected only till 1830. While the Poles constituted the majority of population in the area, in 1847 two hundred fifty seven Polish activists were imprisoned upon charges of conspiracy and eight of them sentenced to death, the Spring of Nations however stopped their execution. Afterwards the victorious Prussian government retreated from its earlied declartions of autonomy in Wielkpolska region, prior to the Settlement Commission the Kingdom of Prussia had made a number of attempts to settle ethnic Germans in regions inhabited by Poles. Another colonization attempt aimed at Germanisation was pursued by Prussia after 1832, in 1871, the German Empire was founded with Prussia being the leading and dominating state. The advent of the Kulturkampf marked a period, when the Prussian government attempted to Germanise the Poles through language, schooling, later, the increase in the sheer numbers of Poles led the government to a direct anti-Polish demographic policy. The Polish population in the province of Posen made up for nearly 60%, by 1885, Prussia still faced difficulties digesting her Polish provinces, and the Polish Question was one of the Reichs most pressing problems. In the late 19th century, an east-to west migration took place, in parts of the population of the eastern provinces migrated to western. The German government was concerned that Ostflucht would lower the percentage of Germans in the eastern regions and this event was used as pretext and justification presented to the international community for actions aiming at Germanisation of those provinces. The destruction of Polish landownership combined with the fight against the Polish clergy was to achieve the elimination of a Polish national identity, the focus on land ownership was motived by the German völkisch idea that where the German plough will plow, there German fatherland will arise

31.
Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי‎ ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו‎, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס‎, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד‎ Yid, ייִדן‎, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group

32.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany

33.
Polish Border Strip
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The term Polish Border Strip or Polish Frontier Strip refers to those territories which the German Empire wanted to annex from Congress Poland after World War I. It appeared in plans proposed by German officials as a territory to be ceded by the Kingdom of Poland to the German Empire after an expected German, German planners also envisioned forced expulsion and resettlement of the Polish and Jewish population which would be replaced by German colonists. The proposed area of the Border Strip comprised up to 30,000 km², the strip was also intended to separate the Polish inhabitants of Prussian-held Greater Poland from those in Congress Poland. The plan has been described by historian Hajo Holborn as the first instance in modern European history of removing whole populations as a solution to national conflicts. In July 1917 the German supreme command under General Ludendorff, as part of the debate and planning regarding the cession of the strip to Germany. Poles living in Prussia, especially in the province of Posen, were to be encouraged by unspecified means to move into the German-ruled Kingdom of Poland. The German minority living in Congress Poland, which had suggested the annexation of all territory up to Łódź in a letter to the German government. Parts of the plans were adopted by Nazis after the war, expulsion of Poles by Germany Map detailing the Polish Border Strip

34.
Austria-Hungary
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The union was a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and came into existence on 30 March 1867. Austria-Hungary consisted of two monarchies, and one region, the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia under the Hungarian crown. It was ruled by the House of Habsburg, and constituted the last phase in the evolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and the Hungarian states were co-equal, Foreign affairs and the military came under joint oversight, but all other governmental faculties were divided between respective states. Austria-Hungary was a state and one of the worlds great powers at the time. Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, at 621,538 km2, the Empire built up the fourth-largest machine building industry of the world, after the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina was under Austro-Hungarian military and civilian rule until it was annexed in 1908. The annexation of Bosnia also led to Islam being recognized as a state religion due to Bosnias Muslim population. Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I and it was already effectively dissolved by the time the military authorities signed the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918. The realms full, official name was The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council, each enjoyed considerable sovereignty with only a few joint affairs. Certain regions, such as Polish Galicia within Cisleithania and Croatia within Transleithania, enjoyed autonomous status, the division between Austria and Hungary was so marked that there was no common citizenship, one was either an Austrian citizen or a Hungarian citizen, never both. This also meant that there were always separate Austrian and Hungarian passports, however, neither Austrian nor Hungarian passports were used in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia. Instead, the Kingdom issued its own passports which were written in Croatian and French and it is not known what kind of passports were used in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was under the control of both Austria and Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary had always maintained a separate parliament, the Diet of Hungary, the administration and government of the Kingdom of Hungary remained largely untouched by the government structure of the overarching Austrian Empire. Hungarys central government structures remained well separated from the Austrian imperial government, the country was governed by the Council of Lieutenancy of Hungary – located in Pressburg and later in Pest – and by the Hungarian Royal Court Chancellery in Vienna. The Hungarian government and Hungarian parliament were suspended after the Hungarian revolution of 1848, despite Austria and Hungary sharing a common currency, they were fiscally sovereign and independent entities. Since the beginnings of the union, the government of the Kingdom of Hungary could preserve its separated. After the revolution of 1848–1849, the Hungarian budget was amalgamated with the Austrian, from 1527 to 1851, the Kingdom of Hungary maintained its own customs controls, which separated her from the other parts of the Habsburg-ruled territories

35.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation

36.
Treaty of Versailles
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The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers and it was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I signed separate treaties, although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919 and this article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, in 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks. On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently, although it is often referred to as the Versailles Conference, only the actual signing of the treaty took place at the historic palace. Most of the negotiations were in Paris, with the Big Four meetings taking place generally at the Quai dOrsay, the First World War was fought across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Countries beyond the war zones were also affected by the disruption of trade, finance. In 1917, two revolutions occurred within the Russian Empire, which led to the collapse of the Imperial Government, the American war aim was to detach the war from nationalistic disputes and ambitions after the Bolshevik disclosure of secret treaties between the Allies. The existence of these treaties tended to discredit Allied claims that Germany was the power with aggressive ambitions. On 8 January 1918, United States President Woodrow Wilson issued a statement that became known as the Fourteen Points and this speech outlined a policy of free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination. After the Central Powers launched Operation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front and this treaty ended the war between Russia and the Central powers and annexed 1,300,000 square miles of territory and 62 million people. During the autumn of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse, desertion rates within the German army began to increase, and civilian strikes drastically reduced war production. On the Western Front, the Allied forces launched the Hundred Days Offensive, sailors of the Imperial German Navy at Kiel mutinied, which prompted uprisings in Germany, which became known as the German Revolution. The German government tried to obtain a settlement based on the Fourteen Points. Following negotiations, the Allied powers and Germany signed an armistice, the terms of the armistice called for an immediate evacuation of German troops from occupied Belgium, France, and Luxembourg within fifteen days. In addition, it established that Allied forces would occupy the Rhineland, in late 1918, Allied troops entered Germany and began the occupation. Both the German Empire and Great Britain were dependent on imports of food and raw materials, primarily from the Americas, the Blockade of Germany was a naval operation conducted by the Allied Powers to stop the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs reaching the Central Powers

37.
Konrad Henlein
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Konrad Ernst Eduard Henlein was a leading Sudeten German politician in Czechoslovakia. Upon the German occupation he joined the Nazi Party as well as the SS and was appointed Reichsstatthalter of the Sudetenland in 1939, the son of an accounts clerk was born in Maffersdorf near Reichenberg, in what was then the Bohemian crown land of Austria-Hungary. Henlein attended business school in Gablonz and in World War I entered military service in the Austro-Hungarian Army as a military volunteer, in May 1916 he attended Officer Candidate School and then was assigned to k. u. k. Infanterie-Regiment Nr.27 based in Graz and he saw Italian Front service in the Dolomites at Monte Forno, Mont Sief, and Monte Maletta from May 1916 to 17 November 1917. Henlein returned home after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1919 to work as a clerk in Gablonz. On 1 October 1933, Henlein founded the Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront, on 19 April 1935 the SHF was renamed Sudeten German Party under pressure from the Czechoslovak government. In the first half of the 1930s, Henlein held a pro-Czechoslovak and overtly anti-Nazi view in his public views, Henlein then swiftly aligned himself with the slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. Thus calling for the predominantly German-speaking Sudetenland to be a part of Germany, Henlein presented his partys policy as striving to fulfill the justified claims of the then largely nazified German minority. Upon the Wehrmachts entry into the Sudetenland, Henlein was appointed Reichskommissar, the SdP merged with Hitlers NSDAP on 5 November 1938. Henlein joined the Nazi Party in January 1939 and was appointed to the Reichstag as a deputy, however, most of the power ended up in the hands of his long-time rival Karl Hermann Frank. On 1 May 1939 Henlein was named Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter of the newly established Reichsgau Sudetenland and he was one of the milder Nazis, prompting RSHA leader Reinhard Heydrich and several others to try to remove him. However, all failed due to Henleins good relations with Hitler. On 10 May 1945, while in American captivity in the barracks of Pilsen and he was buried anonymously in the Plzeň Central Cemetery. In Harry Turtledoves Hitlers War, Henlein is assassinated by a Czech named Jaroslav Stribrny on 28 September 1938, Hitler declares war on 30 September 1938, almost a year earlier than in reality. Henleinists are a presence throughout Martha Gellhorns novel A Stricken Field. Gauleiter, The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, ISBN 978-1932970210 Media related to Konrad Henlein at Wikimedia Commons Konrad Henlein in Britannica Konrad Henlein

38.
Deutscher Volksverband
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DVV was headed by August Utta, and financially supported by the Reich Ministry of Finance. Deutscher Volksverband was most active in the Łódź and Tomaszów area, DVV members denounced the Lodzer Mensch from the DKWB as puppets of the Polish government collaborating with the Jews and committing high treason against the German Reich. In 1935 August Utta was replaced by Ludwig Wolff, a committed Nazi, by the late 1930s, the whole of Poland was covered by ethnic German organizations supported financially by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Third Reich. The Deutscher Volksverband membership grew to over 25,000 participants in 1937, by 1938, all local structures of the DVV were formed. Many members of the DVV became German partisans during the 1939 invasion of Poland according to research and they were treated as an integral part of the German foreign policy towards the Polish state. The DVV community leaders were asked to register people into the Deutsche Volksliste without proof of origin, all that they needed was a declaration, the action was most successful among peasants, as educated Polish Germans did not want to be affiliated with Adolf Hitler. The new Volksdeutsche were trained to guide the Luftwaffe aircraft towards a target with mirrors. In Inowrocław, an ethnic German was spotted fastening big mirrors to a chimney on a roof of his dog pound. In the city of Toruń for example, during the first days of war about a people were arrested and executed for signalling German reconnaissance planes with mirrors. The courses in sabotage were conducted with the promise of receiving property in Poland, volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, Nazi storm brigade in World War II consisting of members of the German minority in Poland

39.
Jungdeutsche Partei
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The party was opposed not only to collaboration with Poland, but also, with other German organizations in Poland. Its leader was Rudolf Wiesner, a committed Nazi and he was replaced by Max Wambeck from NSDAP on 22 November 1938. After the invasion of Poland Wambeck served as SS-Obersturmführer in Chodzież in the Gnesen Gau interrogating and torturing Armia Krajowa resistance members, a considerable number of young Polish Germans joined the rank-and-file of the Party during the mid-1930s as a result of Nazi indoctrination and aggressive recruitment. The party had its own flag with JdP symbol in it, celebrated anniversaries, a hymn sung at gatherings with a Nazi salute, the Jungdeutsche Partei was formed originally in 1921 in Bielsko-Biała as the Deutscher Nationalsozialistischer Verein in Polen. The public rallies held by the party were aggressively anti-Polish, rabidly racist, and anti-Jewish, while proclaiming to the world, We want to be Germans, JDP was dissolved by Adolf Hitler after the invasion of Poland with transfer of its membership to Germany. Deutscher Volksverband, the German Peoples Union in interwar Poland Sonderdienst, Nazi German paramilitary formations created after the invasion

40.
Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle
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The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle or VoMi was an NSDAP agency founded to manage the interests of the ethnic Germans. It would later, under Allgemeine-SS administration, become responsible for orchestrating the Nazi ideology of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe and it was founded in 1937 under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz as a state office of the Nazi Party. Its headquarters were on Unter den Linden, Berlin, voMis primary task was the resettlement of German peoples outside Germany. Between 1939 and 1942, VoMi had resettled half a million ethnic Germans into the occupied territories of the Reich under the slogan Heim ins Reich. These territories included the Reichsgaus of the German Reich, these included Wartheland and this position authorized the SS to plan, initiate, and control the pace of germanisation, settlement and population transfer projects in occupied Poland, this was later expanded to occupied Russia. In 1941 the VoMi was upgraded to an SS Main Office with control over all VoMi personnel, in June 1941 VOMI was absorbed into the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Ethnic Stock run by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. As RKFDV chief, Himmler authorized the SS-Einsatzgruppen and other SS police units to round up and kill Jews, Slavs, in June 1942 Himmler put all VoMi personnel under the jurisdiction of the SS Police and Courts. With Hitlers blessing, Himmler now had control over VoMi, ethnic Germans outside Imperial Germany policy. Although VoMi remained technically an office of the Nazi Party until the end of the Second World War, the RKFDV-VOMi was organized into 11 departments, This department, unlike other VoMi Amts, contained only SS personnel. It contained SS legal officers and a Waffen-SS unit and this was managed by an SD officer. It dealt with SS and non-SS personnel within the Volksdeutsche, in the later period of the war, Amt IIs importance increased as it was responsible for allocating Volksdeutsche to the Reich Labor Service. It was responsible for financing VoMi projects and distributing funds to Volksdeutsche and it was the only department that remained under complete control of the Nazi State and not the Allgemeine SS. This department documented and reported all VoMi activity and resettlement projects and it worked closely with Joseph Goebbels Ministry of Information. Amt IV also published information journals for the German settlers and this provided cultural and educational services to help Volksdeutsche assimilate to German ways. This office looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans that had allowed to settle within the borders of Germany. It also assessed potential candidates for settlement grading them on their ethnicity, politics, however, Amt VI, although tasked with the welfare of Volksdeutsche, worked closely with the Gestapo and the SD of the RSHA. It had a role as Amt VI but looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe, such as in occupied Poland. It had field offices in Krakow, Riga and Kiev and this section was engaged in collating and archiving the cultural history of resettled Volksdeutsche

41.
West German
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West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War era, NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border, after 1961 West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. With the reunification of West and East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, enlarged now to sixteen states and this period is referred to as the Bonn Republic by historians, alluding to the interwar Weimar Republic and the post-reunification Berlin Republic. The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, US and British forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Its population grew from roughly 51 million in 1950 to more than 63 million in 1990, the city of Bonn was its de facto capital city. The fourth Allied occupation zone was held by the Soviet Union, as a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interbellum democratic Weimar Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided among the Western and Eastern blocs, Germany was de facto divided into two countries and two special territories, the Saarland and divided Berlin. The Federal Republic of Germany claimed a mandate for all of Germany. It took the line that the GDR was an illegally constituted puppet state, though the GDR did hold regular elections, these were not free and fair. For all practical purposes the GDR was a Soviet puppet state, from the West German perspective the GDR was therefore illegitimate. Three southwestern states of West Germany merged to form Baden-Württemberg in 1952, in addition to the resulting ten states, West Berlin was considered an unofficial de facto 11th state. It recognised the GDR as a de facto government within a single German nation that in turn was represented de jure by the West German state alone. From 1973 onward, East Germany recognised the existence of two German countries de jure, and the West as both de facto and de jure foreign country, the Federal Republic and the GDR agreed that neither of them could speak in the name of the other. The first chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who remained in office until 1963, had worked for an alignment with NATO rather than neutrality. He not only secured a membership in NATO but was also a proponent of agreements that developed into the present-day European Union, when the G6 was established in 1975, there was no question whether the Federal Republic of Germany would be a member as well. With the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the Berlin Wall, East Germany voted to dissolve itself and accede to the Federal Republic in 1990. Its five post-war states were reconstituted along with the reunited Berlin and they formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany

42.
Zaolzie
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Zaolzie is the Polish name for an area now in the Czech Republic which was disputed between interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia. The name means lands beyond the Olza River, it is also called Śląsk zaolziański, equivalent terms in other languages include Zaolší in Czech and Olsa-Gebiet in German. The Zaolzie region was created in 1920, when Cieszyn Silesia was divided between Czechoslovakia and Poland, Zaolzie forms the eastern part of the Czech portion of Cieszyn Silesia. The division did not satisfy any side, and persisting conflict over the region led to its annexation by Poland in October 1938, after German invasion of Poland in 1939, the area became a part of Nazi Germany until 1945. After the war, the 1920 borders were restored, historically, the largest specified ethnic group inhabiting this area were those identifying as Poles. Under Austrian rule, Cieszyn Silesia was initially divided into three, and later into four districts, one of them, Frýdek, had a mostly Czech population, the other three were mostly inhabited by Poles. During the 19th century the number of ethnic Germans grew, another significant ethnic group were the Jews, but almost the entire Jewish population was exterminated during World War II. In addition to the Polish, Czech and German national orientations there was another group living in the area, the Ślązakowcy, the term Zaolzie is used predominantly in Poland and also commonly by the Polish minority living in the territory. In Czech it is referred to as České Těšínsko/Českotěšínsko, or as Těšínsko or Těšínské Slezsko. The Czech equivalent of Zaolzie is rarely used, the term of Zaolzie is also used by some foreign scholars, e. g. American ethnolinguist Kevin Hannan. The term Zaolzie denotes the territory of the districts of Český Těšín and Fryštát. It makes up the part of the Czech portion of Cieszyn Silesia. However, Polish historian Józef Szymeczek notes that the term is often used for the whole Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia. Since the 1960 reform of administrative divisions of Czechoslovakia, Zaolzie has consisted of Karviná District, after the Migration Period the area was settled by Slavs, which were later organized into the Golensizi tribe. The tribe had a large and important gord situated in contemporary Chotěbuz, after the fall of Great Moravia in 907 the area could have been under the influence of Bohemian rulers. In the late 10th century Poland, ruled by Bolesław I Chrobry, began to contend for the region, from 950 to 1060 it was under the rule of the Duchy of Bohemia, and from 1060 it was part of Poland. The castellany was then a part of Duchy of Silesia, in 1172 it became a part of Duchy of Racibórz, and from 1202 of Duchy of Opole and Racibórz. In order to strengthen the border Władysław of Opole decided to found Orlová monastery in 1268, upon the death of Elizabeth Lucretia, its last ruler from the Polish Piast dynasty in 1653, it passed directly to the Czech kings from the Habsburg dynasty

43.
Deutsche Volksliste
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The institution was first established in occupied western Poland. Similar institutions were created in Occupied France and in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Volksdeutsche were people of German ancestry living outside Germany, in 1931, prior to its rise to power, the Nazi Party established the Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP, whose task was to disseminate Nazi propaganda among the German minorities living outside Germany. The plan for Poland, as set forth in Generalplan Ost, was to purify the newly annexed regions in order to create a Germanized buffer against Polish and Slavic influence. Thus, the Nazis encouraged the Polish offspring of Germans, or Poles who had connections with Germans, to join the Volksdeutsche. Those who joined enjoyed a status and received special benefits. Registrants were given food, apartments, farms, workshops, furniture. Determining who was an ethnic German was not easy in regions that had Poles, ethnic Germans, there were many in western Poland who claimed German ancestry and resisted deportation to the General Government on the basis of it. Even Himmler was impressed by this and said that such resistance must be evidence of their Nordic qualities, Poles who were considered to be suitable for Germanization were sent to the Reich as labourers. A racial assessment was performed with regard to the ethnic German returnee with often disappointing results. In 2006, German historian Götz Aly said the Nazi policy was based on French Republic selection criteria that was used after the First World War to expel ethnic Germans from Alsace. From the beginning of the German occupation of Poland, a number of schemes were developed at the local level. Himmlers solution to the confusing and competing categorization schemes was the Deutsche Volksliste, the Racial Office of the Nazi Party had produced a registry called the Deutsche Volksliste in 1939, but this was only one of the precursors of Himmlers final version. The Deutsche Volksliste was categorized into four categories, Category I, Category II, Deutschstämmige — Persons of German descent who had remained passive. Category III, Eingedeutschte — indigenous persons considered by the Nazis as partly Polonized, Category IV, Rückgedeutschte — Persons of Polish nationality considered racially valuable, but who resisted Germanization. Those members of the population rated in the highest category were tapped for citizenship, at first, only Category I were considered for membership in the SS. Himmler declared that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind to mingle with an alien race. German blood was regarded as so valuable that any German person would necessarily be of value to any country, therefore, Persons who had been assigned to one of these categories but who denied their ties to Germany were dealt with very harshly, and ordered to concentration camps

44.
Baltic states
–
The Baltic states cooperate on a regional level in several intergovernmental organizations. While the native populations of Latvia and Lithuania are known as Baltic people, another Baltic identity, Baltic German, began to develop during the Middle Ages after the Livonian Crusade. After the collapse of Livonia, parts of Latvia and Estonia came under influence of the Commonwealth and this lasted until the 18th century, when the lands of all three modern countries were gradually absorbed into the Russian Empire. The Baltic states gained independence after World War I, but were occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, all three countries are members of the European Union, NATO and the Eurozone. They are classified as high-income economies by the World Bank and maintain high Human Development Index, Estonia and Latvia are also members of the OECD, while Lithuania is a prospective candidate. The term Baltic stems from the name of the Baltic Sea – a hydronym dating back to the 11th century, although there are several theories about its origin, most ultimately trace it to Indo-European root *bhel meaning white, fair. This meaning is retained in modern Baltic languages, where baltas, however the modern names of the region and the sea, that originate from this root, were not used in either of the two languages prior to the 19th century. In English Ost is East, and in fact, the Baltic Sea mostly lies to the east of Germany, Denmark, Norway, in the 13th century pagan Baltic and Finnic peoples in the region became a target of the Northern Crusades. In the aftermath of the Livonian crusade, a crusader state officially named Terra Mariana and it was divided into four autonomous bishoprics and lands of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. After the Brothers of the Sword suffered defeat at the Battle of Saule, Northern Estonia initially became a Danish dominion, but it was purchased by the Teutonic Order in the mid-14th century. The Lithuanians were also targeted by the crusaders, however they were able to resist and it allied with the Kingdom of Poland. After the Union of Krewo in 1385 created a union between the two countries, they became ever more closely integrated and finally merged into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. After victory in the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War, the Polish–Lithuanian union became a political power in the region. In 1558 Livonia was attacked by the Tsardom of Russia and the Livonian war broke out, the rulers of different regions within Livonia sought to ally with foreign powers, which resulted in Polish–Lithuanian, Swedish and Danish involvement. In the aftermath of conflicts of the 17th century, much of the Duchy of Livonia. These newly acquired Swedish territories, as well as Ingria and Kexholm, at the beginning of the 18th century the Swedish Empire was attacked by a coalition of several European powers in the Great Northern War. Among these powers was Russia, seeking to restore its access to the Baltic Sea, during the course of the war it conquered all of the Swedish provinces on the Eastern Baltic coast. This acquisition was legalized by the Treaty of Nystad in which the Baltic Dominions were ceded to Russia, under Russian rule these territories came to be known as Ostsee Governorates

Potsdam Agreement
–
It also included Germanys demilitarisation, reparations and the prosecution of war criminals. Executed as a communiqué, the Agreement was not a treaty according to international law. It was superseded by the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany signed on 12 September 1990,45 years later. After the Second World War, and the Tehran,

1.
The "Big Three": Attlee, Truman, Stalin

Evacuation of East Prussia
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It is not to be confused with the expulsion after the war had ended, under Soviet occupation. The evacuation, which had delayed for months, was initiated due to fear of the Red Army advances during the East Prussian Offensive. Some parts of the evacuation were planned as a military necessity, however, many refugees took to the roads on their own in

1.
East Prussia (red), was separated from Germany and Prussia (blue) proper by the Polish corridor between World War I and World War II. The area, divided between Russia and Poland in 1945, is 340 km east of the present-day Polish–German border

2.
Flight and expulsion of Germans during and after World War II

3.
East Prussian refugees

4.
Refugees

Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia
–
The expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II was part of a series of evacuations and expulsions of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe during and after World War II. During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Czech resistance groups demanded the deportation of Germans from Czechoslovakia, the decision to deport the G

1.
Flight and expulsion of Germans during and after World War II

2.
A 1938 terrorist action of Sudeten German Voluntary Force

3.
Sudeten German women welcome Adolf Hitler in 1938 following the Munich Agreement

4.
Czechs expelled from the border regions

Operation Black Tulip
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Operation Black Tulip was a plan proposed in 1945, just after the end of World War II, by Dutch minister of Justice Kolfschoten to forcibly deport all Germans from the Netherlands. The operation lasted from 1946 to 1948 and in the end 3,691 Germans were deported, after World War II, the Netherlands was a country in ruins and the major pre-war trade

1.
Flight and expulsion of Germans during and after World War II

Wolf children
–
Wolf children was the name given to a group of orphaned German children at the end of World War II in East Prussia. Between the end of 1944 and January 1945, civilians were forbidden by the Nazis to evacuate, the Nazis viewed evacuation as a sign of capitulation. As the Red Army got closer, many prepared to evacuate anyway, until the last minute, t

1.
Flight and expulsion of Germans during and after World War II

Silesia
–
Silesia is a region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is about 40,000 km2, and its population about 8,000,000, Silesia is located along the Oder River. It consists of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia, the region is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several impor

1.
Silesia in an early period of Poland's fragmentation, 1172–1177

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Historic Silesia, superimposed on modern national borders: The medieval and early modern Bohemian and Habsburg province outlined in cyan, Prussian Silesia in yellow.

3.
First map of Silesia by Martin Helwig, 1561; north at the bottom

4.
Coal Mine Bolesław Śmiały, Łaziska Górne

Allied-occupied Germany
–
The four powers divided Germany into four occupation zones for administrative purposes, into what is collectively known now as Allied-occupied Germany. This division was ratified at the Potsdam Conference, in Autumn 1944 the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union had agreed on the zones by the London Protocol. The Final German Peace Treaty

1.
The Allied zones of occupation in post-war Germany, highlighting the Soviet zone (red), the inner German border (black line), and the zone from which American troops withdrew in July 1945 (purple). The provincial boundaries correspond largely to those of the pre-war states, before the creation of the present Länder (federal states).

2.
The C-Pennant

3.
Road sign delimiting the British sector of occupation in Berlin, 1984

4.
Flag used by ships registered in the British zone.

German Federal Archives
–
The German Federal Archives or Bundesarchiv are the National Archives of Germany. They were established at the current location in Koblenz in 1952 and they are subordinated to the State Minister of Culture and the Media, and before 1998, to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The institutions 2009 budget amounted to 54.6 million Euro, on December

World War II
–
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directl

1.
Clockwise from top left: Chinese forces in the Battle of Wanjialing, Australian 25-pounder guns during the First Battle of El Alamein, German Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front in December 1943, a U.S. naval force in the Lingayen Gulf, Wilhelm Keitel signing the German Instrument of Surrender, Soviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad

2.
The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930

3.
Adolf Hitler at a German National Socialist political rally in Weimar, October 1930

4.
Italian soldiers recruited in 1935, on their way to fight the Second Italo-Abyssinian War

Former eastern territories of Germany
–
The former eastern territories of Germany are those provinces or regions east of the current eastern border of Germany which were lost by Germany after World War I and then World War II. All territories lost in both World Wars account for 33% of the former German Empire, while land ceded by Germany after World War II constituted roughly 25% of its

1.
Oder-Neisse line at Usedom

2.
German territories lost in both World Wars are shown in black, present-day Germany is marked dark grey on this 1914 map.

3.
Polish atlas showing ethnic groups in 1918.

4.
Marking the new Polish-German border in 1945.

People's Republic of Poland
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The Polish Peoples Republic covers the history of Poland under Communist control between 1952 and 1990. The name was defined by the Constitution of 1952 which was based on the 1936 Soviet Constitution, between 1947 and 1952, the name of the Polish state was the Republic of Poland, in accordance with the temporary Constitution of 1947. The Soviet Un

1.
Polish authorities made order for Germans to immediately leave Poland after the second world war.

4.
Queue waiting to enter a state-run store, typical sight in Poland in the 1950s and 1980s

Soviet Union
–
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started t

1.
Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd with Trotsky, 1920

2.
Flag

3.
Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, head of the NKVD. After Yezhov was executed, he was edited out of the image.

Second Polish Republic
–
The Second Polish Republic, also known as the Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland, refers to the country of Poland between the First and Second World Wars. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland and it had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline either side of the city of Gdynia. Betwee

1.
Physical map of the Second Polish Republic (1939)

2.
Flag

3.
Józef Piłsudski, Chief of State (Naczelnik Państwa) between November 1918 and December 1922

Baltic States
–
The Baltic states cooperate on a regional level in several intergovernmental organizations. While the native populations of Latvia and Lithuania are known as Baltic people, another Baltic identity, Baltic German, began to develop during the Middle Ages after the Livonian Crusade. After the collapse of Livonia, parts of Latvia and Estonia came under

1.
The Baltic Way was a mass demonstration where ca 25% of the population of the Baltic states participated. It demonstrated solidarity among the three nations and the wish for independence from the Soviet occupation.

Nazis
–
National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, as well as other far-right groups. Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism, identifying Germans as part of what Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race and it ai

1.
Nazis alongside members of the far-right reactionary and monarchist German National People's Party (DNVP), during the brief Nazi-DNVP alliance in the Harzburg Front from 1931 to 1932

2.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, considered one of the fathers of German nationalism

Generalplan Ost
–
The Generalplan Ost, abbreviated GPO, was the Nazi German governments plan for the genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, and colonization of Central and Eastern Europe by Germans. It was to be undertaken in territories occupied by Germany during World War II, the plan entailed the enslavement, expulsion, and mass murder of most Slavic peop

1.
Krychów forced labour camp, 1940. Polish prisoners building irrigation ditches for the new German latifundia of Generalplan Ost. Most were sent to Sobibor extermination camp afterwards.

2.
Map to Document 5: General Plan East with bases and marches in the Baltic states, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Crimea (Planning of the Institute for Agriculture and Agrarian politics of the Friedrich Wilhelm University (Berlin).

Aftermath of World War II
–
Western Europe and Japan were rebuilt through the American Marshall Plan whereas Eastern Europe fell in the Soviet sphere of influence and rejected the plan. Europe was divided into a US-led Western Bloc and a Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, internationally, alliances with the two blocs gradually shifted, with some nations trying to stay out of the Cold W

1.
Warsaw: Aftermath of war.

2.
Ruins in Stalingrad, typical of the destruction in many Soviet cities.

3.
The hunger-winter of 1947, thousands protest against the disastrous food situation (31 March 1947).

4.
Expulsion of Germans from the Sudetenland

World War II evacuation and expulsion
–
Mass evacuation, forced displacement, expulsion, and deportation of millions of people took place across most countries involved in World War II. A number of these phenomena were categorised as violations of human values. The refugee crisis created across formerly occupied territories in World War II provided the context for much of the new interna

2.
Expulsion of Poles from Reichsgau Wartheland following the German invasion of 1939

3.
Jews expelled from the Warsaw ghetto in 1943

Allied-occupied Austria
–
The Allied occupation of Austria lasted from 1945 to 1955. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Austria, like Germany, was divided into four zones and jointly occupied by the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom. Vienna, like Berlin, was subdivided but the central district was administered jointly by the Allied Control Council. After Austr

1.
April 1955. Molotov (left) meets Raab (right) in Moscow.

2.
Flag

Cold War
–
The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. The term cold is used there w

1.
Photograph of the Berlin Wall taken from the West side. The Wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from fleeing and to stop an economically disastrous drain of workers. It was a symbol of the Cold War and its fall in 1989 marked the approaching end of the war.

2.
Allied troops in Vladivostok, August 1918, during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.

Deutsches Historisches Museum
–
It is often viewed as one of the most important museums in Berlin and is one of the most frequented. The museum is located in the Zeughaus on the avenue Unter den Linden as well as in the adjacent Exhibition Hall designed by I. M. Pei, the German Historical Museum is under the legal form of a foundation registered by the Federal Republic of Germany

1.
Facade of the Zeughaus, the Museum's main building

2.
The extension of the museum

Cabinet of Germany
–
The Cabinet of Germany is the chief executive body of the Federal Republic of Germany. It consists of the Chancellor and the cabinet ministers, the Chancellor is elected by the federal parliament after being proposed by the President. Following the election, the Chancellor is appointed by the President, the ministers are appointed by the President

1.
Chancellor

2.
Germany

3.
Vice-Chancellor Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy

4.
Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs

Red Army
–
The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russ

Wehrmacht
–
The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1946. It consisted of the Heer, the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler’s most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern armed forces fully capable of offensive use. In December 1941, Hitler desig

1.
Werner Goldberg, who was blond and blue-eyed, was used in Wehrmacht recruitment posters as the "ideal German soldier". He was later dismissed after it became known that he was a half Jew.

2.
The straight-armed Balkenkreuz, a stylized version of the Iron Cross, the emblem of the Wehrmacht

3.
Inspection of German conscripts

4.
A Volga Tatar Wehrmacht unit

Forced labor of Germans after World War II
–
In the years following World War II, large numbers of German civilians and captured soldiers were forced into labour by the Allied forces. The topic of using Germans as forced labour for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin demanded 4,000,000 German workers. Forced labour was also inclu

1.
Memorial at the border transit and release camp Moschendorf (1945–1957). The inscription states it was the door to freedom for hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, civilian prisoners, and expelees.

2.
The mother of a prisoner thanks Konrad Adenauer upon his return from Moscow, September 14, 1955. Adenauer has succeeded in concluding negotiations about the release to Germany, by the end of the year, of 15,000 German civilians and prisoners of war.

Central and Eastern Europe
–
It is in use after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989–90. In scholarly literature the abbreviations CEE or CEEC are often used for this concept, the transition countries in Europe are thus classified today into two political-economic entities, CEE and CIS. According to the World Bank, the transition is over for the 10 countries that joined th

1.
The pre-1989 "Eastern Bloc" (orange) superimposed on current borders

East-Central Europe
–
East-Central Europe is the region between German-speaking Europe and Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Those lands are described as situated “between two”, between two worlds, between two stages, between two futures, in the geopolitical sense, East-Central Europe can be considered alongside Western and Eastern Europe, as one of the “Three Europes”. The

1.
East Central Europe according to Paul Robert Magocsi

Nationalism
–
Nationalism is a complex, multidimensional concept involving a shared communal identification with ones nation. It is contrasted by Anti-nationalism as a political ideology oriented towards gaining and maintaining self-governance, or full sovereignty, Nationalism therefore holds that a nation should govern itself, free from unwanted outside interfe

1.
Beginning in 1821, the Greek War of Independence began as a rebellion by Greek nationalists against the ruling Ottoman Empire.

2.
The growth of a national identity was expressed in a variety of symbolic ways, including the adoption of a national flag. Pictured, a Scottish Union Flag in the 1704 edition of The Present State of the Universe.

3.
Nationalist and liberal pressure led to the European revolutions of 1848

German Empire
–
The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, f

2.
Flag

3.
Otto von Bismarck

4.
A postage stamp from the Carolines

Prussian Settlement Commission
–
The Prussian Settlement Commission was a Prussian government commission that operated between 1886 and 1924, but actively only until 1918. The Commission was motivated by anti-Polish sentiment and racism, the Commission was one of Prussias prime instruments in the official policy of Germanization of the historically Polish lands of West Prussia and

1.
Former seat of the Prussian Settlement Commission, now Poznań University 's Collegium Maius

Jews
–
The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, s

1.
Baruch Spinoza

2.
Map of Canaan

3.
David Ben-Gurion

4.
George Gershwin

World War I
–
World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts i

1.
Clockwise from the top: The aftermath of shelling during the Battle of the Somme, Mark V tanks cross the Hindenburg Line, HMS Irresistible sinks after hitting a mine in the Dardanelles, a British Vickers machine gun crew wears gas masks during the Battle of the Somme, Albatros D.III fighters of Jagdstaffel 11

2.
Sarajevo citizens reading a poster with the proclamation of the Austrian annexation in 1908.

3.
This picture is usually associated with the arrest of Gavrilo Princip, although some believe it depicts Ferdinand Behr, a bystander.

4.
Serbian Army Blériot XI "Oluj", 1915.

Polish Border Strip
–
The term Polish Border Strip or Polish Frontier Strip refers to those territories which the German Empire wanted to annex from Congress Poland after World War I. It appeared in plans proposed by German officials as a territory to be ceded by the Kingdom of Poland to the German Empire after an expected German, German planners also envisioned forced

1.
Map shows the planned Polish Border Strip and other German war aims in the Eastern Front

Austria-Hungary
–
The union was a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and came into existence on 30 March 1867. Austria-Hungary consisted of two monarchies, and one region, the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia under the Hungarian crown. It was ruled by the House of Habsburg, and constituted the last phase in the evolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Following

1.
Franz Joseph I. (1885)

2.
Civil Ensign

3.
Austrian Parliament Building

4.
Hungarian Parliament Building

Russian Empire
–
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the de

1.
Peter the Great officially renamed the Tsardom of Russia the Russian Empire in 1721, and himself its first emperor. He instituted the sweeping reforms and oversaw the transformation of Russia into a major European power.

2.
Flag

3.
Empress Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, continued the empire's expansion and modernization. Considering herself an enlightened absolutist, she played a key role in the Russian Enlightenment.

Treaty of Versailles
–
The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers and it was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I signed

1.
Cover of the English version

2.
The borders of Eastern Europe, as drawn up in Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

3.
The heads of the " Big Four " nations at the Paris Peace Conference, 27 May 1919. From left to right: David Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando , Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson.

4.
German Johannes Bell signs the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors, with various Allied delegations sitting and standing in front of him.

Konrad Henlein
–
Konrad Ernst Eduard Henlein was a leading Sudeten German politician in Czechoslovakia. Upon the German occupation he joined the Nazi Party as well as the SS and was appointed Reichsstatthalter of the Sudetenland in 1939, the son of an accounts clerk was born in Maffersdorf near Reichenberg, in what was then the Bohemian crown land of Austria-Hungar

1.
Freikorps leader Henlein, September 1938

2.
Henlein speaking in Carlsbad, 1937

3.
Rest during the German invasion on the road to Franzensbad: Henlein in uniform sitting between Hitler and General Wilhelm Keitel (right), 3 October 1938

Deutscher Volksverband
–
DVV was headed by August Utta, and financially supported by the Reich Ministry of Finance. Deutscher Volksverband was most active in the Łódź and Tomaszów area, DVV members denounced the Lodzer Mensch from the DKWB as puppets of the Polish government collaborating with the Jews and committing high treason against the German Reich. In 1935 August Ut

Jungdeutsche Partei
–
The party was opposed not only to collaboration with Poland, but also, with other German organizations in Poland. Its leader was Rudolf Wiesner, a committed Nazi and he was replaced by Max Wambeck from NSDAP on 22 November 1938. After the invasion of Poland Wambeck served as SS-Obersturmführer in Chodzież in the Gnesen Gau interrogating and torturi

1.
Volksdeutsches decorated with the Golden Party Badge by Adolf Hitler in Berlin after Invasion of Poland in 1939. From left: Ludwig Wolff of Deutscher Volksverband, Otto Ulitz, Wagner, Rudolf Wiesner from Bielsko-Biała, Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz, Erwin Hasbach from Ciechocinek, Gero von Gersdorff from Wielkopolska, and Weiss from Jarocin

Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle
–
The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle or VoMi was an NSDAP agency founded to manage the interests of the ethnic Germans. It would later, under Allgemeine-SS administration, become responsible for orchestrating the Nazi ideology of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe and it was founded in 1937 under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz as a state off

2.
Poles being deported during the ethnic cleansing of Greater Poland after its immediate annexation by Nazi Germany following the invasion of 1939.

3.
German settlers are shown around their Nazi-appropriated farmhouse in occupied Poland in November 1939 during action " Heim ins Reich "

4.
Volksdeutsche that had been resettled in the Wartheland by VoMi receive agriculture training in 1940.

West German
–
West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War era, NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border, after 1961 West Berlin was physically separa

1.
Konrad Adenauer in parliament, 1955

2.
Flag

3.
Rudi Dutschke, student leader.

4.
The Volkswagen Beetle – for many years the most successful car in the world – on the assembly line in Wolfsburg factory, 1973.

Zaolzie
–
Zaolzie is the Polish name for an area now in the Czech Republic which was disputed between interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia. The name means lands beyond the Olza River, it is also called Śląsk zaolziański, equivalent terms in other languages include Zaolší in Czech and Olsa-Gebiet in German. The Zaolzie region was created in 1920, when Cieszyn S

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Map of the plebiscite area of Cieszyn Silesia with various demarcation lines

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"For 600 years we have been waiting for you (1335–1938)." Ethnic Polish band welcoming the annexation of Zaolzie by the Polish Republic in Karviná, October 1938.

Deutsche Volksliste
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The institution was first established in occupied western Poland. Similar institutions were created in Occupied France and in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Volksdeutsche were people of German ancestry living outside Germany, in 1931, prior to its rise to power, the Nazi Party established the Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP, whose task was to disse

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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Photo from Jürgen Stroop in a report to Heinrich Himmler from May 1943. The original German caption reads: "Forcibly pulled out of dug-outs". The only person subsequently identified with certainty in the photograph is Josef Blösche the SS soldier with the gun.

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Man showing corpse of a starved infant in the Warsaw ghetto, 1941

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Polish hostages preparing for mass execution 1940

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Destruction of Adam Mickiewicz Monument in Cracow, Poland by German forces on August 17, 1940.

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Memorial plaques with names of the victims at the Kobylisy shooting range in Prague, where over 500 Czechs were executed in May and June 1942

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Guerrilla actions in the Czechoslovakia from January till May 1945. Operation areas of partisans are shown by circles with dashed outlines. Partisan units are shown as red squares (brigades), triangles (groups), and dots (detachments). The large arrows depict major troop offensives by the Red Army.

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Plaque on the corner of Petschek Palace, commemorating the Czech resistance and the victims of Heydrich's courts martial

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From left to right: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Agreement, which gave the Sudetenland to Germany

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Edvard Beneš, the second President of Czechoslovakia and leader of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile.

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Hácha, Hitler and Göring meeting in Berlin, 14/15 March 1939

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First German poster in Prague, 15 March 1939. English Translation: "Notice to the Population. By order of the Fuhrer and Supreme Commander of the German Wehrmacht. I have taken over, as of today, the executive power in the Land of Bohemia. Headquarters, Prague, 15 March 1939. Commander, 3rd Army, Blaskowitz, General of Infantry." The Czech translation includes numerous grammatical errors.

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Prior to the revolution of 1917, Stalin played an active role in fighting the Russian government. Here he is shown on a 1911 information card from the files of the Russian police in Saint Petersburg.

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A group of participants in the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1919. In the middle are Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin.

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Mother tongue in interwar Poland, original map by Central Statistical Office based on 1931 census

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Lighter blue line: Curzon Line "B" as proposed in 1919. Darker blue line: "Curzon" Line "A" as proposed by the Soviet Union in 1940. Pink areas: Former pre-World War II provinces of Germany transferred to Poland after the war. Grey area: Pre-World War II Polish territory east of the Curzon Line annexed by the Soviet Union after the war.

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1914 document showing the official figures from the 1914 population census of the Ottoman Empire. The total population (sum of all the millets) was given at 20,975,345, and the Greek population was given at 1,792,206.

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Declaration of Property during the Greek-Turkish population exchange from Yena (Kaynarca) to Thessaloniki (16 December 1927).

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Top: panorama of Old Town Lublin, including Crown Tribural Second left: façade buildings in Staego Street. Second right: Lublin Castle. Third left: view of Tynitarska Tower, Cracow Gate and many of historical built from Miasto Square. Third right: Tentement house in Klonawica Street, Bottom: view of Plac po Farze area

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Cracow Gate in the Old Town is among the most recognisable landmarks of the city.

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Prince Árpád crossing the Carpathians. A detail from the Arrival of the Hungarians, Árpád Feszty 's and his assistants' vast cyclorama (over 1800 m²), painted to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the Hungarians conquest of Hungary, now displayed at the Ópusztaszer National Heritage Park in Hungary.

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Hungarian Conquest of the Carpathian Basin, from the Chronicon Pictum, 1360.

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18 January 1871: The proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles. Bismarck appears in white. The Grand Duke of Baden stands beside Wilhelm, leading the cheers. Crown Prince Friedrich, later Friedrich III, stands on his father's right.

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Public execution of twenty-five Polish prominent citizens of Bydgoszcz on 9 September 1939 in front of the Municipal Museum in the historic Market Square. The bodies were kept on display for six hours to terrorize town's population.

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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Photo from Jürgen Stroop in a report to Heinrich Himmler from May 1943. The original German caption reads: "Forcibly pulled out of dug-outs". The only person subsequently identified with certainty in the photograph is Josef Blösche the SS soldier with the gun.

1.
The German geographer and ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) coined the word Lebensraum (1901) as a term of human geography, which the Nazis adopted as a by-word for the aggressive territorial expansion of Germany into the Greater Germanic Reich.

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The Greater Germanic Reich, to be realised with the policies of Lebensraum, had boundaries derived from the plans of the Generalplan Ost, the state administration, and the Schutzstaffel (SS).

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German soldiers wounded at Narvik being transported back to Germany on Wilhelm Gustloff in July 1940.

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A porthole window from Wilhelm Gustloff, salvaged in 1988 by Philip Sayers on behalf of Rudi Lange (the radio operator on board at the time of sinking), was donated to the museum ship Albatross in Damp in 2000. The porthole has two steel bars on the outside.